The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Of course you must go,’ the Newab said. ‘You must all go, the Amir himself has said so.’

  Vitkevich would not inquire into this shift of heart. ‘We will not impose on his hospitality to so very great an extent, and it will suffice that I alone go. I thank you for your consideration and respect for our customs.’

  ‘Well,’ the Newab said, smiling broadly at this flattery, ‘if your men will consent to remain as my guests at this most important festival, we shall do our best to help them mark it. The day after tomorrow, you said.’ He wandered off, leaving Vitkevich holding the letter and wondering at what would surely be the men’s surprise at being asked to celebrate Christmas on quite the wrong date.

  12.

  The court dreaded the moment when the Amir left his audience with the Englishman. He swept out and his face, every day, suddenly boiled with rage. The court knew the Englishman knew nothing of this. They stood outside the little audience chamber in silence, awaiting their Emperor’s pleasure, and his voice was always calm and peaceful, asking reasonable and clever questions – such clever questions, if you listened, you would be more astonished at the Dost’s wisdom and knowledge in being able to ask them than you would at the Englishman’s answering them. But the court had no doubt that his manner concealed an overpowering fury, and as he came into their midst, every day, his face had already hardened into an expression of demonic conviction.

  The doors were flung open and the court leapt back a pace or two. The Pearl of the Age walked out, giving them no sign of greeting, not slowing; they rose from their deep bow and sorted themselves out in precedence in a raggle-taggle way as they scurried after him, like dice being shaken in a gaming bag. Peshawar – Herat – Peshawar – Herat. The Dost led the way in silence, and they did their best to keep up, their eyes lowered.

  Outside the women’s quarters, the Amir stopped and coughed decisively. A wail came out – the worst of the wives.

  ‘Not now, Dosto,’ she called. ‘Not today, in the name of everything holy.’

  ‘It is I,’ the Amir said firmly.

  ‘No, not now,’ she said petulantly through the screen. ‘Go away, slave. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’

  The court stood, stiff with embarrassment. Khushhal cast a glance sideways, and one of the princes caught his look, and immediately dropped his head, unresponding. Khushhal, too, dropped his head, but it was too late. The Amir Dost Mohammed Khan had seen his glance, and turned on him.

  ‘You wish to say something, Prince?’ he said, quite quietly.

  ‘No, Amir,’ Khushhal said.

  ‘You insult me, Prince,’ the Dost said.

  ‘No, Amir,’ Khushhal said, in almost speechless terror.

  ‘You insult me,’ the Dost said, firmly, and the fury was black on his face. The court drooped their heads and felt the full force of their relief. It was done, it was over, and now, this time, the rage of the Dost had fallen elsewhere, and how Khushhal would die, they did not yet care to imagine.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE HISTORIAN’S EYE RISES UP, and inspects the world from a safe distance, and sees things which none of these people saw in total, which all of them had to guess at; they are all prisoners in their place, in the dark, guessing at what might be happening from their little cells, their circumstances. The historian is, on the other hand, their warder, and knows everything. The lines between them are fragile and easily broken; Bella, in her moated grange, cannot know what is happening, in that faraway place. She does not care, but if she did, she still would know nothing of these events. The news takes months to travel, and will never reach her in any case. Auckland in Calcutta knows where Burnes is, and he has his instructions, but they can talk to each other uncertainly and unpredictably, and on the whole leave each other alone. Run-jeet Singh hears rumours, and that is all; the court of the Shah is far away, and the solitary envoy there sits, and has to construct his behaviour in accordance with instructions now long out of date. But we, happily, know everything.

  Not many people know, for instance, that there is an Irishman within Herat, constructing the city’s defences, rousing the populace to defiance. How he got there is a mystery, but there he is, and the city is standing firm. He bears the absurd name of Eldred Pottinger, but, despite that, he is proving himself a great hero, and knows it. Pottinger knows a great deal, all in all, and is certain, too, that if he ever gets out of this monumental scrape, what he knows will set off the most almighty row. He knows, for instance, what his masters only guess at, that the Persian troops at the gates are armed by Russians; and though he does not know what the state of affairs is in Kabul, he guesses that he has discovered something of great value. He is right; the black diplomats in Petersburg, at the court of the Tsar, are horribly aware that they are playing a dangerous double game, and should anyone unfriendly discover that they are simultaneously paying court to the Dost and besieging the city of one of his Afghan neighbours, their plans will fall helplessly to the ground. We know, too, that Auckland has given way to persuasion, and when Burnes arrives from his mission to Kabul, it will be to learn that the general view is that his deplorable friend the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan must go, and, in the interests of the stability of the region, that wise and great king Shah Shujah will be summoned from his palace in Ludhiana, and installed with a full display of imperial power on the throne which is rightfully his, to popular acclamation.

  The lines of communication slip and slide, give way, and leave each of them once more in the dark, feeling their way uncertainly, always conscious of the proximity of disaster. Burnes talks to the Dost, and is always conscious of how far he can go, and what he cannot offer his magnificent friend; his hands are helplessly tied, whatever he would like to say. The Amir has the appearance of a man who knows everything, but he does not, and shortly his ignorance of one thing will lead him to what seems like disaster. Only we know everything; they are helpless.

  NINETEEN

  1.

  YUSUF STARTED TO EXPLAIN ONCE MORE. There were seventeen dishes to prepare, and the explanation was long. By him, the kitchen boys squatted and chewed, and listened curiously to their chief. He did not feel confident in his explanation of the feast the kitchen was to prepare, and was not sure that he had entirely understood its reason. The explanation of the foreigner had been long and complex, and Yusuf had listened and nodded, thinking that he was taking it all in. Now it was his task to convey the order to his subordinates, he was not at all sure of the cause of the feast, or what was required.

  A festival, like Eid; that seemed to be it. In the depths of winter, the Christians celebrated the birth of their God with a feast, and it had fallen to Yusuf, the principal cook of the Bala Hissar, to prepare this feast to instructions.

  ‘A holy feast,’ he said, his eyes shut. ‘There will be fish and small birds and mutton.’

  ‘Fish?’ one of the kitchen boys said, his arms folded.

  ‘I will explain,’ Yusuf said. ‘The sauces and the dishes of vegetables we prepare as for a great feast, for Eid.’

  ‘For how many?’

  ‘For two,’ Yusuf said firmly. The kitchen boys looked at him in puzzlement. Yusuf was a skinny, wrinkled man; everything about him seemed shrunken except his tongue, which was too large for his mouth, and he spat a little as he explained. ‘For the guest of the Amir, and an honoured ambassador from the Emperor of Russia. For two only.’

  ‘How …’

  Yusuf sighed. He would go into explanations for the sauces and the dishes in a moment. Now he produced his prize object, handed over by Burnes the day before.

  ‘This is an English fish,’ he said, holding up the solid shining packet. ‘Brought from England.’

  ‘How long does the journey from England take?’

  ‘Many months, but the Englishman explained that the fish will be well. It is—’ Yusuf faltered, unable to explain the mysteries of the hermetically sealed salmon. ‘It is well.’

  The boys gathered round and examined the tightly bou
nd package in scepticism.

  ‘It does not smell,’ one of them admitted.

  ‘And a dish of plums, baked together,’ Yusuf went on. ‘And – I have it all here …’

  The explanations went on, and the English Christmas dinner seemed to make more sense as he talked, to become more like a great court feast, to become more like food.

  Like beasts into the ark, the dead limbs of animals were carried into the great kitchens of the Bala Hissar, and Yusuf sniffed at them and pronounced them good. Quails, live and peeping, flicking their heads about; five chickens in their netted basket, white and shining in the dim hot light of the fire; half a sheep, flung over the shoulder of a bloody squat butcher. And then the fruits of the tree, the vine, the roots, dried plums and mulberries and grapes, shrivelled and richly fragranced; roots and tubers buried in the warm-scented earth of the fields, piles of mushrooms like little cushions, carried in baskets. And the kitchen gave up its hoard of treasures, bottles of pomegranate seeds, glowing like rubies, bowls of yellow and brown spices, pounded by the least of the boys until the air twitched with heat. The fish was opened, and its meat found to be clean and good, and the deepest of the copper pans was set to boiling, to receive it back into its seething element. The kitchen quickly filled with bowls, each containing a different thing, steeping in unctuous dark liquids, exchanging their rich flavours for the great Christian feast. On the floor, three boys sat, dealing with the birds; the butcher took each bird out, one by one, and with his axe beheaded the chickens, with his clever thick hands wrung the necks of the quails. In the yard, the children of the court watched this favourite entertainment, their mouths open. The butcher brought their little limp bodies back, and the three boys took them, each by each, and calmly began the peaceful work of plucking them, their quiet absorption in the fug of dust broken only by the occasional violent sneeze. The fires roared, and Yusuf went from corner to corner, examining, prodding, shaking his head, until he was satisfied. And then the cooking could begin.

  The lamb was spitted, and dripped over the crackling fire; its sauce of almonds and saffron and thread of gold thickened in the care of Yusuf’s attentive brother. The pickles were chosen, and sat in their wax-sealed jars, waiting to be opened. Two chickens boiled in a vat of water with roots, with garlic-scented grass; they had long to go, and when the meat had been stripped and the bones pulled out, the rich soup would be boiled and boiled, and produce a few tablespoons of plummy sweet juice. The quails were boned, and placed inside the remaining chickens, their heads poking from the orifice in the high courtly manner, and inside the quails was a forcemeat of lemon and mushroom and the finest dried apricot, the apricots from the summer garden of the Bala Hissar itself; over them, in the end, a sauce of pomegranate, boiled into an oaky brown. The stuff for bread was all there, and the cook already beginning his task, already kneading and mixing and shaping. The slippery dishes of aubergine, the pulpy smooth mash of roots, the melting onion, that could wait; the silver sweetmeats were laid out already on the glittering salver; the cakes and fruit pastries piled high in the third of the larders, the darkest, the coolest one, as well-water ran softly down its walls. And Yusuf returned, satisfied, to the strangest of his labours, to the English pudding he was creating.

  The plum pudding was in its early stages, and Yusuf felt exhilarated by this new, this fantastical dish. Five bowls of dried fruit were arrayed before him, each soaking in water and milk, each growing plump. The seven types of nut were in neat little piles, arranged from the bitterest green walnuts to the sweet creamy white nut every cook had a different name for; some chopped to a floury fineness, some to the size of lentils, some halved, some left whole, according to their nature. The eight spices, the cardamom, the seed of the fennel, the cumin, the poppy seeds and the sweet bark of the cinnamon, the pile of cloves with their stony petals and their pebbly little heart where the best flavour hid, the pepper with its strange property, the property of not being tasted, of making every other thing taste more powerfully of itself, and there, in its precious little jar, a precious little stony nutmeg, the single nutmeg in the whole of Kabul, kept for just such a purpose as this. All this would combine, and in the end, there would be a mysterious single smell, the perfume of the cedar tree. The treacle, the honey, the brick of sugar. The eggs rested in their golden straw; the flour and the mutton fat, which in the end would soak up all that sweetness, weighed, prepared, measured. And there, at the end of the pile of raw food, was a single silver coin, as instructed by the Amir’s honoured guest, to be placed inside the treacly mixture, placed deep inside and hidden. Everything was there, before Yusuf, and as he took a deep breath and prepared to begin, the boys of the kitchen abandoned their task, and came for an amazed moment to watch the extraordinary task their master was embarking upon.

  Their faces glistened in the heat, and for hours, as they laboured, they only shouted at each other. Through the open door, from time to time, came a small child or two in a gold brocaded coat, one of the Amir’s small sons, and stood and gazed at the hellish fiery scene. The air was stormy with hot purple flavours, roaring out of the kitchen into the cold mountain air. Yusuf was a favourite with them, always popping a nut or a slice of sugar or a spoon of honey into their mouths (or sometimes, teasingly, a burning-hot pepper root, red as sin, for no better reason than to watch them cry and puff. But that, they found, was fun too). Today he cast them hardly a look as he went briskly from place to place, dipping a finger into a sauce, prodding at the bread, sticking a blackened prong into the heart of a limp roasting bird with the considered accuracy of the compassionate executioner; testing, tasting, eating in fragments the great strange feast, bellowing and roaring and nodding with a benevolent half-smile when, against everything, it seemed to be coming near to the goodness he had so clearly seen. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ he roared at them, and they ran, the children, twenty paces into the yard, where they stopped, and soon, step by step, the boiling fury of the kitchen drew them back to stand and stare, their watering tongues licking their little chins.

  And then all at once the feast was done, and everything, as if by magic, came together at the same time; the world, its traders, its ambassadors, had poured its many virtues in homage into this fiery room, and from each corner of the room, the kitchen boys came with their heavy perfect burdens, each after the other placing their perfect dish on the great silver plates. Their histories had prepared them for this moment, too; each boy, each chef, came from a line of palace chefs, and their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had poured decades of kitchen expertise into their proud descendants, preparing them for this moment. And the feast, in tremendous procession, began to leave the kitchens of the palace. Yusuf watched it all go, and when the kitchen was left, bereft, ruinous as a battlefield, he sank to his hams and for the first time all day, closed his eyes, closed his ears to the boys’ chatter, and abandoned himself to the entirety of exhausted pleasure. The feast was done.

  2.

  Vitkevich was in pain, and held his hurting face as if it were some delicate soft fruit. He had envisaged and planned for his journey, had packed cigars and books, medicines against sickness and ennui, had thought of possible disasters; but he had not thought of this. His whole face hurt, and although he knew that the cloud of pain must be emanating from a single tooth, he could not find which one it could be. Sometimes it seemed a back tooth; sometimes it seemed to him that it came from the other side of his face entirely. He felt like poking a sharp point into his mouth, or even, sometimes, into his ear. He felt that would extinguish the pain.

  Oblovich recommended chewing on cloves, and suggested sagely that the pain of a tooth sometimes subsided of its own accord. Vitkevich, cradling the entire right side of his face, nodded, knowing it was not true; this would get worse and worse, and finally his cheeks would explode in a mess of blood and pus and rotting teeth. The sweet woody stench of cloves filled their rooms, until they all grew to hate it – Vitkevich most of all.

  They had been taken by sur
prise by the civil letter from the Englishman, asking Vitkevich, by name, to dinner, and discussed it endlessly. Whether it came merely from the Englishman, or whether it was some sort of despatch from Dost Mohammed, they could not agree on, and had no real means of telling.

  Vitkevich suffered his pain, and could think of nothing else. The idea of a feast was so unbearable to him that he would not entertain it – for days, indeed, he had put nothing in his mouth but the occasional clove to suck and thick hot coffee, bitter under the sugar, as if cigars had been extinguished in it. He was not his usual plotting self, and since he would not think of food, he did not think of the feast, or the Englishman. He sat in his misery, a huddled little lump in the corner of the room, clinging on to the fading belief that this pain might go away of its own accord.

  ‘We can always tell the Englishman you’re not well,’ Oblovich said, experimentally. ‘I mean, one of us could go, just as easily. Better if someone else went, Vitkevich.’

  Vitkevich shook his head irritably – it was like watching a molten ball of metal topple around a box, so slowly did the pain attendant on his movement fade. The rest of them looked at each other.

  ‘He wouldn’t mind putting it off,’ Oblovich offered. ‘Just a day or two, I mean.’

  ‘Ah farff ingo ha korffaffa,’ Vitkevich said. Then he reached into his mouth and pulled out the handkerchief he was biting on, knotted and sodden – the pain was so hot, he felt it must be wet with blood, but it was only saliva. He tried again. ‘I hardly think,’ he said, his tongue mincing about the least tender parts of his mouth, ‘that would be wise. If we delay it may never happen. And the excuse for the dinner is Christmas, after all.’

  ‘Christmas?’ Oblovich said – he was unnecessarily obtuse, really.

  ‘The English Christmas,’ Vitkevich said. He winced, horribly, and the others winced sympathetically. ‘Impossible.’