Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  ‘Tidying my papers.’

  Blaise gazed at the manuscript, typed years ago into Ezra’s first computer, an Amstrad. The edges of each sheet of paper were serrated, torn from the roll that fed through the integrated printer. ‘Tell me the story of that girl, Daddy,’ she said.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘You know, who was going to be scarified.’

  Ezra smiled. ‘Really?’

  Blaise looked up at him with a babyishly pleading expression. ‘Please, Daddy.’

  Yes, Ezra realised: this was the outlet for his work. It wasn’t anthropology, never should have been; he was a simple storyteller, a teller of tales to his children and his friends. This was the only homage he could pay the people whose lives he’d ruined.

  ‘The Achia,’ he said, ‘removed all the hair from their body. Did I tell you that? It was something they did for each other: using splinters of bamboo, women shaved their husbands’ beard. Men cut their wives’ hair. Friends plucked each other’s eyebrows and lashes, with tweezers made of flexible twigs.

  ‘After I began handing out small mirrors, this mutual grooming gradually ceased. The first time the Indians saw their reflections, they were astonished. For half an hour or more they stared at themselves, holding the mirror sometimes at arm’s length, sometimes right under their nose. But as they became used to them, so they began to use the mirrors to pluck and shave their own hair.

  ‘One slight young girl, aged eleven or twelve, Yorugi, possessed a mirror I’d given to her.’

  ‘Yorugi,’ Blaise repeated. ‘That’s the one, Daddy.’

  ‘Even though she rarely looked in the mirror, Yorugi always checked that she had it with her. I asked her why the mirror was so important.

  ‘“One day I will be a woman,” she said.

  ‘“Then you will want the mirror?”

  ‘“I will be old,” she said. “I will become real.”

  ‘“You are not real now?”

  ‘“Now,” she laughed, “I am a child.”

  ‘Some weeks after this there was a commotion. Yorugi’s mother was weeping. Her father called across the village to Yorugi’s godparents – loud enough to broadcast the news – “My little girl’s blood falls! My daughter’s blood is here!”

  ‘Now, I was sure no outsider had witnessed an Achia girl’s initiation. I hoped they’d allow me to. I squatted silently outside my hut, and observed. Yorugi had gone.’

  ‘Where was she?’ Blaise asked.

  ‘I didn’t know. Her parents disappeared too, and her godparents started looking for her, in various huts around. They did this in a theatrical manner, as if playing hide and seek with a toddler. They came into my hut, ignoring me, and said, loudly, “No, she is not here. Yorugi is not here.”

  ‘I noticed various young men, meanwhile, slipping out of the camp. Eventually the godparents retreated inside Yorugi’s family’s empty hut, at which point the girl herself came in from the forest.’

  ‘She’d been watching,’ Blaise nodded, sagely.

  ‘Presumably. Yorugi went straight to her hut where, as far as I could tell, her godparents gave her a massage, before leaving her unfed and alone.

  ‘The next morning Yorugi’s godfather soaked kymata vine shavings in water, which turned white and creamy in texture. Her godmother and other women joined him outside Yorugi’s hut: the girl came out and they washed her, soaping and rinsing her from head to foot with the purifying shavings and liquid.

  ‘Yorugi was led to a new hut the women had made. Her godmother cut off the girl’s hair. Two cords made from nettle fibre were knotted under her knees: these were supposed to help her legs grow fat.’

  ‘Why did she want to be fat?’ Blaise asked.

  ‘The Achia were horrified by thinness. How could a thin woman walk through the forest with a basket on her back, a child in her sling? The thighs and calves of an Achia woman had to be round and strong to be beautiful.

  ‘The other helpers, meanwhile, now washed each other – having become unclean through their contact with the girl. When they’d finished, young men, those who had disappeared the day before, returned to the village, and now they too were washed. I wondered who these various young men were: I thought I understood by then the family relations of all the Achia in this village. When the bathing was over I asked one of them, Wekoni, Kabuchi’s brother, whose own male initiation I had witnessed.

  ‘“All the lovers of Yorugi are in danger,” he explained.

  ‘I thought of the slight, young girl experiencing her menarche, and of the eight youths who had been washed.’

  ‘Eight?’ Blaise demanded, with an expression of distaste. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Gross.’

  ‘“All of you are her lovers?” I asked.

  ‘“We were all in danger,” he confirmed. “Now we are safe.”

  ‘That afternoon Yorugi was painted, by her aunt, with a black paint made from beeswax, resin and powdered charcoal. The woman warmed the paste to liquefy it, and applied it to Yorugi’s skin with a polished wooden blade. It made a shiny line that would not fade for days, even if she washed in the river. Her face was decorated with horizontal stripes on her forehead, and vertical ones on her nose, cheeks and chin. Then her torso was painted with six rows of vertical marks, from her neck to her pubis. The same was done to Yorugi’s arms, and back. The effect was striking. Later, I spotted Yorugi at dusk, studying herself in her small mirror.

  ‘That evening Yorugi’s godfather gave everyone involved in her initiation some gruel made of pindo flour and corn and honey, and the girl herself had some – her first food for two days.

  ‘Fatigued from concentration, not knowing what would happen from one moment to the next, I slept deeply that night. When I awoke and peered out of my hut, I saw the village was empty except for Yorugi’s parents, and Yorugi herself, still in her seclusion hut.’

  ‘Everyone else had gone?’ Blaise asked.

  ‘Yes. I went over and asked Yorugi’s father, who looked extremely unhappy, what was happening. “I am sad, White One,” he said. “My girl is scared. She will not be cut.” I ascertained that Yorugi was to have been scarified with a stone by her godfather.’

  ‘Like boys,’ Blaise said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Ezra said. ‘Yes, boys had their first initiation at puberty, but those cuts were little more than a few scratches. The boys entered a time of freedom then, of sex with prepubertal girls. After they were done with youth, and were ready for marriage and a family, they would be cut again, deeply. Girls were given deep cuts at puberty, because for them it was now time for marriage and children.’

  ‘So much sex, Daddy,’ Blaise frowned.

  ‘For them it was normal,’ Ezra explained. ‘It wasn’t as sad as it sounds.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was sad,’ Blaise said. Gazing at the carpet, she chewed her hair.

  Ezra looked at his manuscript. Yes, he thought, let his memory be the one repository of this experience. It really has to be burned. ‘“My girl refuses to be cut,” Yorugi’s father said. “Our law is broken. My daughter lacks courage.” He gazed morosely into the distance. “What shall I do, White One?” he asked.’

  Ezra stopped talking. He sat immobile in his chair.

  After some time, Blaise asked, ‘What is it, Daddy? Are you going to finish?’

  Ezra barely heard her. What shall I do, White One? He was back in the forest. ‘What?’ he murmured. ‘Oh. Blaise.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Ezra shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You see,’ he resumed, ‘none of the villagers had ever asked me such a question before. No Indian had once enquired where I came from, from what tribe or family, still less sought my opinion or my advice on any matter. I had been intrigued by, and then grown used to, the Achia’s utter lack of curiosity, which I understood as being bound up with their discretion and tact towards each other.

  ‘“What shall I do, White One?” Yorugi’s father asked. Shocked, and not wishing to interfere, I mumbl
ed something noncommittal and slipped away. It was only much later that I understood he had asked me this question, had pleaded with me to help cure the disruption, because he sensed that I, with my mirrors and everything else I’d brought, was the cause of it.’

  Blaise felt confused. Her father had told the story she’d wanted him to, but then instead of finishing it with the drama of the girl who refused to be cut, he’d carried on, and made it a completely different story. About himself. She had a dead leg, Blaise realised as she pulled herself up. ‘Well, thanks, Daddy,’ she managed.

  ‘Sleep well,’ Ezra muttered, as she leaned down to kiss him goodnight. She left the room. I just told her, Ezra reflected. I just told Blaise, if she could or wanted to hear it. It was all there: why it is I could never go back.

  The Pepins and the Azams sat and knelt on tartan rugs, on the raised escarpment of pockmarked pasture that fringed the southern end of Port Meadow. Beneath the high bright sun, the Meadow was sprinkled with people. Optimists threw kites in the air and ran away, and the kites nosed up into the still haze sniffing for a stray current or gust. Bicycles glided along the track to Burgess Field, the smoothness of their movement hard to reconcile with the frantic insect pedalling of riders’ thin legs. Couples, small groups, strolled slowly, as if consciously arranging and rearranging themselves into pleasing congregations for those gazing, like Ezra Pepin, from far away.

  Out on the Meadow a lad marched in a horizontal line, directly towards the river. Suddenly he broke into a mad spasm, a dancing fit, a Bacchic frenzy, ducking and twisting and swerving.

  Gesturing in his direction, Ezra said, ‘I wonder what that chap’s got playing on his Walkman.’

  ‘The boy is sick,’ said Abdul Azam. ‘That what it is.’

  Without taking his eyes off the spectacle, Akhmed’s brother, Ishtiaq, said, ‘A wasp is pestering him. Maybe he’s allergic.’

  The young man abruptly altered his tactics, breaking into a run and sprinting towards the river.

  They’d met at noon, the Pepins bicycling over, although Blaise had left the house earlier and gone to the Azams: as her family arrived she was helping the sisters – introduced by Abdul as Zenab and Taslima – to lay the rugs with paper plates, plastic utensils and cups, and metal takeaway tubs, whose lids they removed under the instruction of Mrs Azam, who was herself, like her husband, seated on a low folding chair. With each object the girls lifted from the cardboard boxes they’d hauled over from the car park Mrs Azam gesticulated crossly, pointing to where things should be placed exactly, which serving spoons a particular dish required, and other precise points of picnic etiquette. Blaise responded to these peppery exhortations as if she understood them, which Ezra presumed she could not. It seemed important to her to try to second guess and obey Akhmed’s mother.

  ‘A wonderful idea, this,’ said Sheena.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Abdul. ‘Wonderful. Thank you. Taslima: chairs for Mr and Mrs Pepin.’

  ‘No, it’s for us to thank you,’ Ezra said.

  ‘My wife,’ said Abdul. ‘She is pleased to meet your wife.’

  Sheena approached Mrs Azam. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Sheena Pepin.’ Her arm at her side, Ezra observed, was tense with readiness to offer itself for a handshake at the merest twitch of invitation, but Sheena was loath to raise it unilaterally; to impose upon Mrs Azam a method of greeting that may for all she knew have been alien, over-intimate, false for such a meeting.

  Mrs Azam nodded her head at Sheena, though with her eyes averted, and muttered various sounds which might – in contrast to her loud and specific Bengali of moments before – have been embarrassed stabs at English. At English vowel sounds, at least.

  ‘Akhmed you know,’ Abdul drawled. ‘This one my eldest son, Ishtiaq. Then Yusuf, he is not here. Ishtiaq he is just graduated from Liverpool University. Very good degree. Chemistry. He is clever one, Ezra, this boy.’

  Akhmed sat on the ground beside his father, his shoulders hunched, while Ishtiaq stood grinning at Ezra. One would have thought it was the younger brother being embarrassed by their father’s boasting.

  ‘I haven’t actually got the result yet,’ Ishtiaq said, smiling.

  ‘Nearly as clever as sister,’ Abdul continued. ‘Zenab study economics in Manchester, Ezra. She has her mother’s brains. And Taslima taking five A levels. Of course,’ he said, smiling his amusement at Ezra, ‘they are all more clever than their father. Everybody more clever than Abdul.’

  Ishtiaq turned to Peanut Louie. ‘I’m glad someone thought to bring a football,’ he said. ‘Wanna kick?’

  Louie, who’d been staring at one or other of the Azams, now looked down at the ground.

  ‘Come on, Lou,’ Hector said. ‘He’s not really shy,’ he explained to Ishtiaq. ‘Are you? Only for a minute.’

  Ezra watched the three of them trot some yards away, and begin to pass Louie’s blue plastic ball between them. Hector was indifferent, if not hostile, to football, as to every sport except swimming. You could see, as he scuffed the ball to Ishtiaq, his ineffectual ungainliness. He was only playing for Louie’s sake, and once he judged that his brother was comfortable with this friendly stranger he’d surely slip back here to the main party. Such thoughtfulness, Ezra reckoned: that was something worth boasting about, wasn’t it, Abdul?

  Louie was wearing his favourite mauve buttoned shirt with flowers printed on the back. Ezra recalled buying it for Blaise ten years earlier: an early example of chic clothing in infants’ size. When Hector inherited it, a couple of years later, young men were briefly wearing such feminine shirts. The style then drifted back out of fashion, but this summer, Ezra had noticed, it had come right back in, with identical cut and design on sale in high street stores, retro cool, his children’s chronology synchronous with fashion’s ebb and flow.

  ‘My wife prepare all this,’ Abdul told Ezra, gesturing towards the feast being made manifest before them. The girls were removing the last of the lids from pots that contained hot food. Spicy aromas rose into the still air. ‘Nothing from restaurant, Ezra,’ Abdul emphasised.

  The Azam boys both wore white shirts and dark trousers. The girls plain but bright shalwar-kameezes. All four children, Ezra observed, were the same height and slim build as their father and each bore the same delicate features, in contrast to their mother, whose coarser physiognomy marked her as someone from a different tribe altogether to the children she and her husband had engendered. As if the sly paternal DNA had outsmarted the mother’s rougher genes.

  Ezra and Sheena sat on folding chairs, the Pepin boys knelt on the rug beside the men. They were given a plate each, cutlery, napkin. The sisters, assisted by Blaise, carried each dish around.

  ‘What a feast!’ Sheena exclaimed in Mrs Azam’s direction. Zenab translated, and her mother shook her head in modest agreement.

  ‘What are these?’ Sheena asked, taking a cylindrical pastry.

  ‘Masala dosa,’ Zenab explained. ‘The bhaji’s hot. They’re nice with that coconut chutney.’

  ‘These are potato samosa tartlets,’ said Taslima.

  ‘This is bhel puri, Mum,’ Blaise told Sheena. ‘It’s made with tamarind and jaggery.’

  ‘Jaggery?’ Sheena asked, but before her enquiry could be answered, Abdul said, ‘Mrs Pepin! Please! You have nothing to drink.

  Akhmed, can’t you see your sisters busy with food? Serve people, please.’

  Akhmed rose and stepped over to a large cooler box, from which he extracted two unlabelled plastic bottles. Anticipating him, Blaise plucked a stack of transparent cups from a box, and chucked them loose as she moved from one person to another. Akhmed followed her with an opened bottle in each hand, saying little louder than a whisper, ‘Lemon or ginger?’

  There were many dishes, portions of which accumulated upon each person’s plate. Under the hot sun they ate the tasty food in silence, except for exclamations of delight from Sheena Pepin as another pungent sensation impressed itself upon her tongue. Samosas and pakoras. Aloor d
um, masala onion drops, green peas kachori.

  The dishes were too spicy for Louie’s palate. He ate nothing but plain parathas: rolling one up, he held each end and nibbled enthusiastically along it. He looked like he was playing a harmonica, consuming it as he played.

  The men sat on and around one tartan rug, the women another, brushing off inquisitive wasps. Blaise knelt, like Zenab and Taslima, which looked odd to Ezra: he was sure she customarily sat cross-legged on the ground. She sat closer to Mrs Azam than to Sheena.

  There was a restlessness about Mrs Azam as she ate. Her head was bent and her gaze encompassed little more than her plate, but within that limited circumference her eyes darted, and her lips moved. It could almost be mistaken for greed, but it looked to Ezra as if she were plucking up courage to say something, presumably to Sheena; her first sentence ever in English, perhaps, a vital item of information, or sentiment, that she just had to communicate. About their children. Or about the meal. But still she was greedy, gathering morsels with nervous fingers. Until gradually her agitation eased; tranquillised by food, Mrs Azam relapsed in her folding chair into the still silence of an idol.

  Abdul Azam, on the other hand, ate without haste, regally chewing as slowly as he spoke.

  ‘Nice place here, Port Meadow, Ezra,’ he said. ‘I don’t come here. Abdul too busy working. It’s like that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Ishtiaq confirmed, in case Ezra might not have believed his father. ‘Dad never does anything like this.’

  ‘We’re honoured,’ said Ezra.

  ‘No, no,’ Abdul said. ‘Is our honour.’

  ‘It’s common pasture,’ said Ezra. ‘Never been ploughed. The Thames rises and floods the Meadow every year.’

  ‘Like the Nile,’ Abdul nodded.

  ‘Wasn’t it the Egyptians,’ Ezra said, ‘who used three calendars? A political one, another for festivals, and a third based on the rise and fall of the River Nile for farming.’

  ‘And now we all agree to accept one calendar, of scientists,’ Abdul smiled. ‘Who are so clever, that astronomy is not accurate enough for them. That what it is. Earth does not spin around the sun precisely enough: they discover that planets had been losing two seconds every century.’