Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. We may be a bit later than that. I can’t say exactly.’

  ‘By eleven?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best. Now tush and go to sleep. See you in the morning.’

  One of the things I remember most strongly about Iran was being frightened of the dark. I spent hours each night lying in bed, rigid with fear, until I finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the small hours.

  My nights were peopled with faceless burglars adept at slipping into houses through the barest crack of open window, crazed Iranians skilled at climbing walls like lizards out to avenge themselves on the farangi, people with swords and cutlasses, members of sinister oriental cults bent on ritual murder, bat-men who flitted from tree branch to tree branch before effortlessly appearing in your bedroom, people who lurked just out of sight at the bottom of your bed when they were not hiding in the cupboard, and of course a legion of venomous snakes, scorpions, deadly spiders and poisonous biting millipedes, which writhed, clung and slithered under your bed, on the back of the chair and across the floor on the way to the bathroom.

  Now here I was, alone in Meshed in a huge curtainless bedroom in a strange house. There were some servants but they were out of sight and out of earshot in their distant quarters. I could hear an irregular scratching noise in the hall outside. Then silence. Then there was a bang, like a door or a shutter closing. Then silence again. Through the tall barred windows I could see shapes in the trees. There were dark man-sized creatures among the waving leaves of one of the trees. I could see their black wavy shapes outlined against the streaky grey night sky. One of the creatures appeared to have wings. I thought about turning the light on, but then the creatures would be able to see me. I looked at the luminous hands of my watch. Half past nine. An hour and a half till Ma got back. I was lying on my back so I could see out of the window. I did not dare turn on my side away from the window in case the figures in the trees moved closer. They had changed shape. There was a third one, bigger and more threatening than the first two, in another, larger tree. Down the hall the scratching noise had started again. From the streets of Meshed I could hear the distant barking of the pye-dogs, the raucous night-time music of every Persian town.

  Ten thirty. Ma would be home in half an hour.

  Now there was a crouching shape in the corner of my room, next to the tall wooden cupboard standing against the far wall. I inched my hand over as quietly as I could to the bedside table and felt for my torch. I flicked it on and shone it quickly at the shape. The shape disappeared. The dangerous crouching shape was only a shadow cast by the moon on the towel stand. I put the torch back and looked out of the window once more. The shapes were still there among the windblown leaves. I had to concentrate to see them, but then one and then the others would come into focus.

  At half past eleven Ma was still not back. I decided to go and look for her. I turned on my torch, shone it around the room to make sure that there was nothing lurking anywhere and looked under the bed for my slippers. These were solid rubber-soled Stubbington slippers handed down to me by Michael, who had outgrown them. I put them on along with my green tartan dressing gown and crept to the door. It made a creaking noise as I opened it. Outside the passage was dark. I switched on the light and made my way carefully along it to the top of the stairs, switching on the landing light as I went. I tiptoed down the stairs into the echoing front hall. Fortunately a light had been left on there. I made my way to the front door and reached up to the huge brass knob. The door was not locked. It took both hands to open the door, but then I stepped out into the driveway, which was illuminated by a single light, and walked towards the gate.

  There were voices coming from the gatehouse. As I approached it one of the Sikh guards emerged and looked at me in astonishment. He called out something in Punjabi and the other guard appeared. They both stared at me in silence. Then the first one found his voice.

  ‘Hah. Hello, master. What you want, please?’

  ‘Excuse me, do you know where my mother and Mr Macleod are? They said they’d be back by eleven and it’s past that now and they’re not back and I have to go and find them.’

  ‘Hah? Sahib not here. Go to house, please.’

  ‘But where did they go? They went in the car.’

  I made driving motions with my hands and pointed down the road beyond the gate.

  ‘Please, not know. You go back.’

  Furious Punjabi ensued between the guards.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to go and find them.’

  With this I walked through the gates and out into the streets of Meshed, leaving the Sikhs gazing after me and shaking their heads.

  The street outside was barely lit and empty of people. Bits of rubbish blew in the wind. Two hundred yards away was a junction. I padded towards it in my slippers while the wind tugged at my dressing gown. I was nervous but not as frightened as I had been lying in the consulate bedroom looking out at the shadows. When I got to the junction I looked both ways. To the right the street was narrower and ran between tall buildings, but I could see lighted houses at the end of it. I walked that way. As I started off I heard the noise I dreaded. Until now the feral pye-dogs which inhabit every Persian town had been a distant chorus, but suddenly I heard a snarl behind me and turned to see a yellowish dog baring its teeth at me. It had come out of the rubbish-filled alleyway I had just passed. Another joined it. The two of them snapped at each other and then one made a lunge towards me. I was too terrified to turn and run, and anyway some instinct told me that if I did they would be on me in an instant.

  ‘Go away! Go away!’ I screamed, backing away. More dogs appeared. There were six or seven snarling, growling, snapping curs. They all looked rabid with their froth-flecked teeth.

  ‘Help! Go away!’

  Perhaps they understood Persian.

  ‘Imshi! Imshi! Please go away.’ I could feel my voice rising.

  The street was empty. Each lunge brought one of the dogs closer. It was only the fact that they were distracted by fighting with each other that had kept them away this long. I saw a mud brick in the street. I picked it up and hurled it at the lead dog. It yelped and backed off.

  The headlights of a car came around the corner. The dogs scattered as it drove towards them. I jumped up on the pavement to get out of the way. The car skidded to a stop. Ma jumped out of the front seat before it even came to a halt. Mr Macleod was driving. JRC and one of the Sikhs were sitting in the back. They all leaped out of the car after Ma.

  ‘Mileso, are you all right? What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh Ma. I was so frightened. The dogs.’

  ‘Silly chap. Where did you think you were going? You’re all right now. Come here.’

  She gave me a big hug and shepherded me back to the car. JRC swung his crutch at the nearest dog.

  ‘Bugger off before I throw my crutch at you,’ he shouted in his most fearsome voice. Then, turning to me, ‘You all right, Mileso, old boy? You gave us quite a scare when we got back. Don’t know what a wee lad like you is doing out in the streets of Meshed at this time of night. You’ll frighten the mullahs.’

  ‘Mileso darling, what did you think you were up to?’

  ‘Well, you said you’d be back by eleven o’clock, and I was worried when you weren’t there. I thought I’d come and find you.’

  ‘You should have been asleep. Was something keeping you awake?’

  ‘Well, not really. I just couldn’t sleep.’

  9

  I Set Fire to Rustumobad

  From the first time I met him I could see that Franco was different to the other people we saw. First of all, he dressed in a different way. In Tehran he always wore a suit. So did most of Ma’s English and American friends, but Franco’s suits sat on him differently. Theirs bagged and hung; Franco’s draped naturally around his tall frame. His whole manner was different. He seemed to be both more casual and more formal with his high d
omed forehead and his serious-looking face, which all of a sudden would break into a grin like a thirteen-year-old’s, and his laugh, which was both catching and conspiratorial.

  I do not remember the first time I met Franco. He was not around at the time of our first Christmas in Mahmoudieh, but by the time we moved to the house in Tehran he seemed always to be there. It was not just Franco’s dress and manner that were different; he was the first person who treated me as if I were a grown-up. JRC was away most of the time, either travelling on business to exciting-sounding places like Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and Amman or, I had realised from a chance remark of Ma’s, in Tehran but not living at home. That seemed perfectly natural. My friends’ mothers and fathers lived together and did everything together; JRC and Ma on the other hand, though always on cheery, chatty terms, were living increasingly separate lives after our first few months in Tehran.

  Franco was, Ma told me, the Italian ambassador. I knew all about ambassadors as Tehran at that time was full of ambassadors and other diplomats. It was not long before Ma and I moved in with Franco. Moving in with Franco meant moving to Rustumobad. Rustumobad was about ten miles from Tehran. The road there soon petered out into dirt, as did almost all roads out of Tehran apart from the main road to the Caspian, and bumped its way through orchards and fields surrounded by irrigation ditches with sturdy wooden sluices to a small village on the side of a hill.

  This was Rustumobad. It had one main street with a few dark alleys leading off it. A huddle of little shops on the downhill, south, side of the road sold food, groceries, ironware and paraffin. Most of the north side consisted of a long baked-mud wall more than twice as high as a grown-up, so high you could not guess what happened behind it. Set into this wall, which was the depth of a building, were various enterprises with doors leading on to the street. There was a hammam, where, Franco said, the men of the village went to sit in the warmth and to gossip. Beyond the hammam was the chaikhana, the tea house, where the men of the village went to go on gossiping after they had been to the hammam, out of doors in the summer and indoors during the icy Tehran winters. And beyond the hammam and the chaikhana, standing by itself, not part of the great mud wall, was a small mosque with a stunted little minaret, where, according to Franco, the men of the village would go to gossip before they went to the hammam and the chaikhana, or even after they had been to the hammam and the chaikhana.

  ‘Who does the work if the men are gossipping the whole time?’ I asked.

  ‘The women.’

  In the middle of the wall, between the hammam and the chaikhana, were two great wooden doors with intricate carvings on them and complicated metal fixings. Nothing gave any clue as to what was behind.

  We parked in the dusty street in front of the doorway. Franco banged hard on the doors, and soon there was the noise of bolts being withdrawn, and a wicket gate set into one of the mighty doors creaked open. I stepped in over its sill and gasped. Before me was a seemingly unending garden. Every surface was covered with exotic plants, flowering bushes, creepers hanging in long tendrils, tall trees. In the middle of this was a square ornamental pool.

  Stairs led up from the garden to the most amazing house I had ever seen. Even in India I did not remember anything like this. There I had seen forts and castles and maharajahs’ palaces that had been bigger and grander, but this was not one of those. This was a private house, a house where I was going to live.

  Franco, Ma and I had been driven up there by Ben, Franco’s driver, who like Petrossian was an Armenian. Ma had said that Franco was going to be moving in as soon as it was ready, but when we reached the house and I had recovered from my initial amazement I could see that there was one major drawback to Rustumobad. It was a ruin. Bits of wooden scaffolding were holding up walls and pillars everywhere. It must have been many years since anyone had last lived there.

  Rustumobad

  For what seemed like months the place was buzzing with workmen, all wearing the same baggy black trousers and baggy white shirts; a few of the craftsmen wore embroidered waistcoats on top of the baggy shirts, and everyone had a hat, for most a tight-fitting cap although one or two had mini-fezzes. The people working in the house usually wore caps, and the people in the garden had the fezzes.

  On most days Ma and I would be up there by ourselves with the workmen while Franco went about his diplomatic duties. In the late afternoon Franco would arrive to inspect the work that had taken place that day. He was like a little boy opening a Christmas present. I trotted along behind pretending interest but was bored by the works taking place.

  Sometimes Franco would turn to me and seek an opinion. ‘Miles, old chap,’ he would say with a smile and an exaggerated English accent, ‘what do you think of the way they have done this? The tiles, are they too bumpy here, not smooth enough? Or do you think it is better to leave a few bumps? We don’t want this to end up looking like a new house, do we?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, I think you’re right, Franco. I agree.’

  ‘Thank you, Miles. I’m glad you do.’

  Usually I had no idea what Franco was talking about. Why would anyone in their right mind want to have uneven tiles? But I was skilled at working out what it was adults wanted to hear and agreeing with them, even though many of their opinions seemed unaccountable. It was also nice to be asked my opinion just like a grown-up.

  While the work was going on, Franco and Ma had made expeditions to different parts of Iran. They went to Yezd, Persepolis, Shiraz and other places I had never heard of, and wherever they went they came back with the car filled with junk. At least that is what it looked like to me, although they behaved as if this stuff were the most precious treasure in the world: pieces of old pottery, wood and glass, some of it still covered with dried mud. ‘Miles, my friend, look at this. What do you think this is?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know, Franco. I, er . . . It looks like a dirty old pot.’

  ‘Exactly, it is a dirty old pot, but do you know why I bought it? This pot was made more than 2,000 years ago, before Christ was born.’

  ‘Gosh.’ It was difficult to think of what to say to this piece of news.

  ‘But,’ continued Franco, ‘it’s not just a dirty old pot. You remember the story of Aladdin?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘And what did Aladdin have that he used to rub?’

  ‘I know. A lamp. And when he rubbed it a genie flew out.’

  ‘Well, go and get Aldo and ask him if he will bring me a little oil and a piece of wick from the paraffin stove.’

  Aldo was Franco’s cook, butler and general looker-after. I ran off to the kitchen to fetch Aldo, who was having a quiet nap. Aldo’s duties were light, and he spent most of the day sleeping. I woke him up and explained what was needed. Aldo spoke excellent Farsi but no English. My request elicited an offer of ice cream or pannetone. I ran off to get Franco, and the problem was solved by a burst of Italian from Franco and puzzled head-nodding from Aldo. We followed Aldo back to the kitchen. Franco carefully poured oil into the pot from a bottle Aldo handed him, dipped one end of the wick in the oil and then laid that end along the groove on the top of the lamp’s spout while putting the other end in the oil.

  ‘Aldo, a match.’

  He put the pot down on the kitchen table and handed the matches to me.

  ‘Now, Miles, light a match and touch the end of the wick with it. Let’s see what the dirty old pot can do.’

  I did as I was told and watched as the black smoke from the end of the wick turned into a small yellow flame.

  ‘Ecco. Aladdin’s lamp.’

  Then one day Rustumobad was finished.

  When Michael arrived for the summer holidays, I set about showing him around my new territory. At the Tehran end of the garden beyond where the servants hung the washing to dry was a jungly bit. Michael and I made a tunnel into the middle of the bushes, where there was a clearing the size of a small tent completely covered and enclosed by the leaves. The tunnel was too small for a grown-up to c
rawl along so we were safe from interruption in there. We collected furniture for our secret camp. An upturned wooden orange crate made a good table and we had logs for chairs. From time to time we sneaked food from the kitchen and scurried off down the tunnel to have a camp feast. None of the adults knew about the camp; they were probably just pleased that we seemed to be so peacefully occupied most of the time. One day, Paul, a boy of my age with whose mother I would often be left for a couple of days when Ma and Franco went off on one of their trips, came up to spend the day at Rustumobad. His mother dropped him off in the morning.

  ‘What are you boys going to get up to?’ Ma asked.

  ‘Oh, we’ll just muck about,’ Michael said.

  The three of us headed off to the Tehran end of the garden. We checked to make sure no one was looking and, Michael leading, ducked into the tunnel on our hands and knees. I was delighted to see how impressed Paul was.

  ‘This is amazing. We haven’t got anything like this at home. Bet you spend all day here,’ said Paul.

  ‘It’s jolly good, isn’t it? Here, would you like some cake?’ Michael asked. We had stolen a large piece of iced sponge from Aldo’s larder.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could cook in here,’ said Paul. ‘You could make toast and things like that.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a really good idea.’

  ‘Fat chance of your having a good idea,’ said Michael. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, I know what we could use to cook over. Franco’s got this old pot, but it’s really a lamp and you can light it and it’ll go on burning.’

  ‘What? You sure?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Yes, really. You just wait here. I’ll show you.’

  I hurried back to the house and checked carefully to see if there was anyone around. The coast was clear. Five minutes later I crawled into the camp holding the lamp and a bottle of oil which I had selected from one of several in the empty kitchen. Aldo must have gone to do the shopping. I had brought some bread to toast on the lamp. All this was in a bag I had found in the kitchen.