Burnt Shadows

by Kamila Shamsie

  He summoned the boy closer with a single gesture from his index finger.

  ‘What can you do?’

  Sajjad Ali Ashraf raised his eyes to James’s.

  ‘I can be priceless,’ he said. At the sound of choked laughter coming from Elizabeth, he reddened. ‘Invaluable,’ he corrected himself. ‘I can be invaluable.’

  Who would have thought he’d one day come to see that declaration as understatement, James thought, watching the boy – a man now – pick his way quietly across the grass to the sunbird.

  Sajjad lowered himself to a crouch near the ruby hollyhock from which the bird was feeding, the iridescent feathers at its throat winking from crimson to black to emerald as its head dipped and retracted. When he married, he sometimes fantasised, he would leave his family’s home and buy a house, just for himself and his bride, and the central courtyard would be a garden, filled with flowers heavy with nectar and vibrant with colour to summon Delhi’s birds.

  The sunbird hovered between Sajjad and the hollyhock for a moment before darting out of sight. Sajjad stopped to wonder who his mother and aunts would pick to be his bride. They had chosen well for two of his brothers, but the third – Sajjad shook his head in contemplation of the sullen, slow-witted creature his brother Iqbal had married. Angling his back so that James Burton couldn’t see what he was doing, Sajjad leaned forward and flicked his tongue into the hollyhock, trying to sample its nectar, but without any success. Well, whoever he was going to marry, Sajjad thought as he stood up and returned to the verandah, it would be soon. His father’s illness and death two years earlier had terminated his mother’s first round of searching, and the second round had proved itself an excessive waste of time – if his sister-in-law’s cousin was going to elope why couldn’t she have done it at the start of the marriage discussions, not when the final preparations were under way? The whole matter had sapped everyone’s spirit, but in the last few weeks the women of his family had started to turn their attention once more to the matter of Sajjad’s future.

  Occasionally Sajjad imagined finding a wife for himself, but then he thought of the Burtons.

  ‘Let’s play chess,’ James said, dismissing the contents of the file with a wave of his hand.

  ‘The alleys of Dilli are “insidious as a game of chess”.’ Sajjad sat down opposite James, his hand sweeping over the lower half of his face to wipe off any pollen that might have attached itself to his skin. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Rubbish.’ James passed his handkerchief to Sajjad and gestured to the spot of pollen on the bridge of the other man’s nose. ‘Chess isn’t insidious. It was my move, wasn’t it?’ This question incorporated a joke between the two men, referring back to a time when Sajjad was too conscious of the disparity of their social positions to contradict anything the Englishman said. Now, whenever they played and it was Sajjad’s move first, James would claim the turn for himself.

  ‘Yes, your move.’ Sajjad brushed his fingers across his nose, and returned the handkerchief to James. He knew how important it was to James to enact these moments of camaraderie which undercut the rigidity of the barriers between them. That it was only in James’s hands to choose when to undercut and when to affirm the barriers was something Sajjad accepted as inevitable and James never even considered.

  James raised his eyebrows at Sajjad.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. It was yours.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Burton.’ With barely a glance at the board, Sajjad moved his knight into the path of James’s pawn.

  ‘What are you being so petulant for? Move that knight back, Sajjad, don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Why isn’t chess insidious?’

  ‘It’s that damn book again, isn’t it? You’re quoting that damn book to me.’

  The ‘damn book’ was Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi, published during the war by Hogarth Press. James’s mother had sent him a copy for Christmas and he’d read no more than two pages before deciding it an overblown piece of hyperbole and thrusting it in Sajjad’s hands to show him the kind of nonsense that was being praised as an Indian masterpiece. ‘Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster at their patronising best. You could write a better book than this.’ But Sajjad loved the novel, and had taken to peppering his conversation with quotations from it in the hope of revealing to James the beauty of its sentences.

  Sajjad moved his knight back to its previous position, and pushed his pawn forward instead.

  ‘Do you think an Englishman will ever write a masterpiece in Urdu?’

  ‘No.’ James shook his head. ‘If there ever was a time we were interested in entering your world in that way, it’s long past. And you wouldn’t know what to do with us if we tried.’

  It seemed to Sajjad these were the kinds of things said so often that repetition made fact of conjecture. He’d know what to do with an Urdu masterpiece written by an Englishman. He’d read it. Why pretend it was more complicated than that?

  ‘Anyway, if it was going to happen it would have happened by now. The new Viceroy’s arriving soon. To preside over the departure of the Raj from these shores.’ He sat back, surveying both Sajjad and the garden beyond as though he were in equal parts responsible for both. ‘Even the best innings must come to an end, I suppose.’ Sajjad wondered how James Burton would have felt about the end of the Empire if he didn’t have this cricketing phrase handy. James returned his attention to the board, smiling as he identified the trap Sajjad was laying for him. ‘People who know about such things seem to think the creation of this Pakistan seems quite likely now. Ridiculous really.’

  Sajjad twirled his fingers in the air in what James had learnt to recognise as an Indian gesture of indifference.

  ‘Either way it won’t matter to me. I will die in Dilli. Before that, I will live in Dilli. Whether it’s in British India, Hindustan, Pakistan – that makes no difference to me.’

  ‘So you keep saying. I think you’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Why nonsense? The British have made little difference to the life of my moholla.’ At James’s look of confusion he translated ‘neighbourhood’, barely disguising his impatience at the Englishman’s failure after all this time to understand that all-important Urdu word. ‘It goes on as it has gone on. Yes, there are interruptions – 1857 was one, perhaps the departure of the British will be another – but believe me over the next century Dilli will continue to do what it’s been doing for the last two centuries – fade at a very slow, and melancholically poetic, pace.’

  James made a noise of disbelief at the assertion that the departure of the British would be nothing more than an interruption, but contented himself with saying, ‘If that really is the case, then you’re mistaken in thinking you’ll live and die there. You’re not cut out for a fading world.’

  If Sajjad had the sort of relationship with James Burton of which he sometimes convinced himself while inventing speeches and subjects of discussion on the way from Dilli to Delhi he would have laughed and said, ‘Is this what you call a flourishing life? Spending my days playing chess with you? Isn’t it time for us to get back to the law offices, James Burton?’ But instead he kept his eyes on the board and nodded his head slowly as though deeply reconsidering his relationship with his moholla.

  ‘Don’t believe me?’ James said. When Sajjad merely smiled and shrugged, James put a hand on his arm. ‘I don’t know any man more capable.’

  In moments such as these Sajjad loved James Burton. It was not so much for the compliment itself – Sajjad had no need of those from anyone – but for James’s way of compressing a complicated matrix of emotion, one that encompassed the relationship of ruler–subject, employer–employee, father–son, chess-player–chess-player, into the word ‘capable’.

  There was the sound of the front door opening, and then Lala Buksh’s voice said, ‘Wait, please. I will tell Mrs Burton.’ James and Sajjad heard his heavy tread go up the stairs.

  ‘Wonder who that is?’ James said, rising out of his chair. He walked into the hall
way, Sajjad following.

  There was a woman there, hands in her trouser pockets, looking at the portrait of James, Elizabeth and their son Henry which hung on the wall. In addition to the blue trousers, flared below the knee, she was wearing a cream pullover with sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and her dark hair was cut just below her ears. Even with her back turned to them she looked like no one James knew among the Delhi set.

  ‘Are you here to see my wife?’ he said.

  She turned, and James said, ‘Good Lord,’ as he found himself looking at a Japanese woman.

  ‘I’m Hiroko Tanaka. You must be James Burton.’

  2

  There were only three things Hiroko Tanaka knew about James Burton when she walked into his house. He was Konrad’s brother-in-law. His uncle, George, had built Azalea Manor. He had a Muslim employee. So when Lala Buksh opened the front door for her and, amidst the black-and-white of walls and floor tiles, she saw the vibrant oil painting on the wall calculated to create a first impression of the Burton family for all visitors it was James more than Ilse who she stepped closer to examine. Who was this man about whom Konrad had nothing to say? But when she looked at the portrait – the man in his expensive suit, one hand on his wife’s shoulder, the other resting on a cabinet which showcased sports trophies – she saw immediately what the painter had captured so perfectly: the complacency of James Burton. And then she understood why Konrad would have had nothing to say to, or about, him.

  Standing before James, her extended hand unnoticed as he stared in confusion at her, she thought he looked like a discarded sketch that preceded the oil painting. The chestnut hair depicted in the painting was really light-brown, the slightly bronzed skin was pale and freckled, and the green eyes were set closer together than the painter had acknowledged. And yet, as good manners firmly but gracefully ushered the surprise off James’s face and prompted him to take Hiroko’s hand as though he’d been expecting her all along, she saw that the painting was a good likeness – here was a man at ease with ease.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ he said. And then, as if answering a question that would win him a bottle of champagne, he declared, stabbing the air in triumph, ‘Konrad!’

  Sajjad, standing unnoticed behind him, winced.

  This is what Elizabeth heard: Lala Buksh’s voice telling her there was a visitor from Japan, and then as she hurried along to the stairs James’s cry of delight carrying up to her: Konrad! Her heart, if not her mind, had already leapt to its impossible conclusion when she rounded the curve of the stairs and saw the wholly unfamiliar figure standing beneath, back towards her.

  Noticing James’s eyes sweep from her towards the stairs, Hiroko turned her head. And discovered a new aspect to pain. It was Konrad become female, and beautiful. The ginger hair augmented to copper, the heavy eyes made sensual rather than sleepy, the lankiness transformed into slimness. Beside her, James was saying, ‘My wife, Elizabeth. Darling, this is Miss . . . Tanker?’ and a man’s voice behind him corrected, ‘Tanaka,’ but Hiroko did nothing but stare at the figure walking down the stairs.

  In the past eighteen months there had rarely been a day when she hadn’t thought of Konrad walking backwards, refusing her invitation to ‘stay’, but at some point the memory had become associated with, rather than accompanied by, overwhelming emotions. Not so many months ago she had been dancing with an American GI in Tokyo when some shimmying movement of his recalled Konrad’s departure, and she hadn’t even lost a step as she saw the dance through to its end before excusing herself to the powder room, where she wept at her own callousness before returning for another dance. No, there was little Hiroko Tanaka hadn’t learnt about the shameful resilience of the human heart. But seeing Elizabeth descend the stairs made it only yesterday that Konrad walked away from her to his death.

  ‘Miss Tanaka,’ Elizabeth said, extending her hand to the woman who was staring at her so disconcertingly. She intuited immediately that this was someone who had known Konrad well enough to be disturbed by his half-sister’s resemblance to him. When there was no response from Hiroko, she reached out and caught the other woman’s hand, which was hanging unthought of by her side, so for a moment they simply held hands before the unfamiliarity of Elizabeth’s touch, the coolness of it, removed the ghost of Konrad from between them and Hiroko adjusted her grip and shook the hand vigorously.

  ‘Ilse,’ she said. It occurred to her that she should be saying ‘Mrs Burton’ instead, but in conversations with Konrad it was always ‘Ilse’.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ corrected the other, with an apologetic smile that suggested she was at fault for having discarded her childhood nickname. ‘And what may I call you?’

  ‘Hiroko.’

  ‘Could we offer you a cup of tea, Miss Tanker?’ James said. ‘It’s lovely out on the verandah.’ Why couldn’t Elizabeth be so affable with the wives of his clients? ‘Lala Buksh, chai!’ he called up to the henna-haired man on the upstairs landing. Then he extended one hand in the direction of the verandah, inviting both women to precede him there.

  Hiroko waited for Elizabeth’s response – she had pledged her allegiance in the household already, Sajjad thought – and only when she received a smile and nod of the head did she make her way down the hall, with Elizabeth following closely after. On the way to the verandah, she let her eyes linger on the Indian man who was standing to one side to allow the three foreigners to pass.

  ‘Sajjad, find some way to occupy yourself. We’ll get back to those files later.’

  ‘Sajjad?’ Hiroko stopped in front of the Indian.

  ‘Yes?’ He wanted to reach out and touch the black, raised spot on her cheekbone, to see if it was part of her or if it was a tiny beetle that had landed on her skin, tucked its wings under its body and decided never to leave. She struck him as a woman who would allow certain liberties – to beetles and to curious men – if the intentions weren’t discourteous.

  She was about to say that Konrad had spoken of him but before she could Sajjad gave Hiroko a look of warning and shook his head slightly. What are the rules of this place, she wondered, as she smiled uncertainly at him and walked on past James and Elizabeth’s looks of curiosity. Had Konrad felt as lost when he first came to Nagasaki? If only she had his purple-covered books; if only there were that much of Konrad Weiss still in the world. But the tree on which he’d hung his book mobile had burnt to a blackened stump on 9 August, though Konrad’s neighbourhood was otherwise uncharred. Yoshi Watanabe had said the bomb couldn’t possibly have been responsible – perhaps someone walking past the vacant plot had been lighting a cigarette when the flash of the bomb had startled him into dropping a match or the cigarette itself over the low wall. ‘Even if that’s true, the bomb is still responsible,’ Hiroko had said.

  The desire to sit down on the ground and weep was strong, but instead Hiroko stepped on to the verandah, and into another world. Everything was colour, and the twittering of birds. It was like walking into the imagination of someone who has no other form of escape. So beautiful, and yet so bounded in. She sat down on the chair James had pulled out for her, and said yes, she would love some tea.

  ‘What brings you to Delhi? Have you been here long?’ James crossed his legs at the knee and sat back, his elbows jutting out slightly from the arms of the chair.

  Elizabeth watched him with interest as she settled herself less expansively. After eleven years of marriage she remained fascinated by James’s way of directing people’s perceptions of him. How casually he’d tossed the term ‘darling’ in her direction, minutes earlier. He did that often enough when they were in public, or hosting parties, but something about hearing it in the morning hours, with Sajjad standing near by glancing up in surprise, had made that travesty of endearment particularly striking.

  ‘I just arrived. I didn’t want to be in Japan any longer,’ Hiroko said.

  James nodded encouragingly, as though approving the opening of a play and indicating his willingness to stay and discover how events un
folded, but Elizabeth saw that Hiroko had reached the end of her answer.

  ‘And you know Konrad?’ she said. Hiroko nodded. ‘He told you he had relatives in Delhi?’ As she spoke she ran her palms along the fabric of her dress, smoothing what wasn’t creased to begin with. As though she believed the flowers imprinted in the cotton had fallen into her lap from the shrubs leaning into the verandah, Hiroko thought. That was a Konrad-thought.

  ‘Bungle Oh!, Civil Lines, Delhi,’ she said softly, speaking the memory out loud. ‘He said who could resist such an address?’

  James leaned forward slightly.

  ‘Have you come from Nagasaki?’ She seemed far too . . . whole to belong in any of those photographs that he still didn’t see the point of publishing in magazines that people’s children might get their hands on. As eight-year-old Henry had. Daddy, did Uncle Konrad look like this when he died? the boy had said, pointing to something barely recognisable as human in a magazine that Elizabeth had stupidly brought into the house.

  ‘Tokyo. I’ve been working in Tokyo since soon after the war ended. As a translator. Someone I knew there told me about a friend of hers who was coming to India, to Bombay. We met, and I convinced him to let me travel with him. And from Bombay I took the train to Delhi.’

  ‘What, alone?’ James glanced over at Elizabeth. She’s making this all up, his eyes signalled.

  Hiroko didn’t miss the unspoken communication – since the bomb she had started to watch the married with the keen interest of one who knows all her understanding of coupling must come from observation.