Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

‘You hate me when I talk like this, Lan. I don’t much like myself. You know why I do it. Because I like the Afghans, because I think, given the chance, they could make something out of their country. You couldn’t find a friendlier, keener, more humorous crowd of students anywhere in the world; yes, and more intelligent, too. Yet they’ll all become clerks and ill-paid teachers and inefficiently trained doctors and necessarily subservient civil servants, all shifty-eyed and cringing and afraid to speak their minds; while that creep Wahab becomes Principal, then Chief Inspector, then Secretary-General of Schools, and finally Minister. That’s what makes me talk like this.’

  ‘You may be wrong about him, Harold. He was a student, too.’

  They heard the gate bell ring and Sofi dash out to answer it.

  ‘That’ll be the letter now,’ said Harold.

  He could not wait for it to be brought in but jumped up and went out.

  She heard him laughing affectionately with Sofi, and then in he padded, the letter in his hand. He held it up.

  ‘By the way, Lan,’ he said, ‘you haven’t had a reply from her yet?’

  He took the single sheet of flimsy blue notepaper out of the envelope. He held it to his nose and sniffed.

  ‘Scented! I didn’t think our Laura was the kind to use scented notepaper.’

  As he slowly read, he took a long sip of whisky.

  ‘Scent and asperity!’ he said at last, with a grin. ‘Truly a strange girl is our Laura.

  ‘Listen. “Dear Mrs Mossaour [I bet you her ears bristled as she wrote that, it’s scarcely a true-blue English name, is it?] “Thank you for your letter of the 21st. I am delighted that you will be able to offer me employment in your school. Teaching there, with children of so many nationalities, must be very interesting.” [New paragraph.] “If I have not given much consideration to the points that you and Mr Moffatt have felt it to be your duty to bring to my notice, it is merely because I have so often previously discussed them with my fiancé, Mr Wahab. That his country has faults is certain; I have them too; and surely England is not perfect, though perhaps to exiles like yourselves she does seem so. In my professional capacity, and also in the course of some voluntary social service work which I do, I am sorry to say I come across quite a number of cases of unhappiness not unlike Mrs Mohebzada’s.” [Another new paragraph.] “I do not usually appreciate interference in my private affairs, but the circumstances here are sufficiently abnormal to excuse it. Indeed, I am grateful to you both for your concern. Yours sincerely, Laura Johnstone.” ’

  When he had finished he let out a bellow of laughter. ‘What have we been worrying about?’ he cried. ‘What age did she admit she was? Thirty-five, was it? An old maid, a female bureaucrat, with tight lips, massive knees, and a sense of humour like a hospital matron’s. Can’t you picture her?’

  Lan could, and, in spite of the sarcasm with which he had read, her picture was altogether different. She imagined a small slim woman with pale tense smile and, under the table, her good foot firm on the floor. The stiff dignity, awkward pride, snapped gratitude, and schoolmistressy pompousness of the letter were not characteristic of her. Beneath them breathed, like a frightened creature, a profound anxiety.

  He sat down on the arm of her chair and placed his hand on the back of her neck.

  ‘I wasn’t drunk, you know, when I threw the whisky in his face. I hated him, but I had no right to. Before I saw him at the school that afternoon I was prepared to hate him, and I found it easy. Don’t ask me why. If this Johnstone woman had been there too and I’d seen him be actually brutal to her, I couldn’t have hated him more. For God’s sake, why? I don’t think he’s up to much, but one usually ignores his kind, one doesn’t pay them the extravagant compliment of hatred.’

  She waited.

  ‘And he didn’t insult that bitch Helga, either. That was a lie.’

  ‘What was it he did say?’ Would there, she wondered, be another lie?

  ‘Something about my having no children.’

  ‘Was he taunting you?’

  ‘No. He seemed so bloody happy. Maybe what I was really doing was throwing the stuff in my own face.’

  ‘It was a strange thing for him to say.’

  ‘I suppose so. He was a bit drunk, of course. Anyway, we were talking about Liz Mohebzada’s baby.’ His hand tightened painfully on her neck. ‘If we do have a child, Lan, where do we go with it? We can’t stay here all our lives, though I think I would, if they let me. Should we apply for Afghan citizenship? And ask Wahab to be one of our sponsors? Whatever Naim may say or hope, I don’t think his country is going to become what’s called progressive, for a long time anyway. So we’d have to put up with primitive plumbing and dust in our melons and camel shit outside our door, but we’d never have to be ashamed of the colour of our skins. Perhaps it’s not so impracticable. I could ask Naim; and there are others. They’d want us to become Moslems. Well, I could be a bad Moslem just as easily as I’ve been a bad Christian. What about you? Would you forsake the philosophic Buddha?’

  ‘My children would be my religion.’

  ‘Yes, Lan. I know they would.’ He got up and stood in the middle of the room, running his hand through his hair. ‘Where today is there freedom to practise that kind of religion? Here, yes, in this country that’s still next door to the desert. But not in civilized England; no, not there. You’d be accepted: so quaint, so charming, so beautiful, so purely Chinese. But your children, Lan, and mine, make no mistake about it, would at every stage of their growth be treated – oh, in such kindly fashion – as freaks.’

  She did not think people were as prejudiced and callous as that, but she did not argue.

  ‘We could go back to Djakarta,’ she murmured.

  He seemed to be considering that, for he was silent for almost a minute. Then he burst out: ‘No!’ And turned furiously on her, almost as if he were going to strike her. She saw his fears in his face. In Djakarta whom could their children marry? Indonesians, or Chinese, or half-castes like themselves?

  ‘There’s just no place at all, Lan,’ he said, desperately. ‘Even here’s been spoiled by my own bloody nastiness. I’ve managed to do what I didn’t think anybody on earth could have done: I’ve cheapened you. I’ve given a shower of bastards not fit to lick your shoes the opportunity to laugh at you. Christ, how can you ever forgive me?’

  She put down her sketchbook and went over to him. ‘I love you. I shall always love you.’

  ‘As the priestess loves her god? Yes, Lan, it’s not possible for human love to stay constant, whatever happens. I love you. I never loved you more than when I was standing over there, telling them that joke. I could see your face. Yes, you still loved me, but, my Christ, how humiliated you must have felt. If you don’t remember that humiliation on your death bed, I will. So what protection’s love? Mohebzada loves his wife; and maybe Wahab loves his Laura, in his own crooked way. And I’ve often thought that the trouble with John and Helen Langford is that their love for each other’s got all tangled up. You see, it’s not the bath of syrup for everybody that it is for Alan and Paula. You should go home, Lan, before it’s too late.’

  ‘I have no home without you.’

  He embraced her and kissed the top of her head. ‘And I’ve got none without you. As long as we keep together, we’ll beat them. We’ll show them that if they thought they were going to lick their lips over the spectacle of our breaking up, then they’re going to be disappointed.’

  She remembered how enthusiastic and apparently sincere their acclamation had been at the Club Dance. Most people would be pleased that they were reconciled again. Perhaps a few, like Helga Larsen, would be disappointed; but she wondered if a part of him, a deep uncontrollable part, would be too.

  ‘You knew it all before we got married, Lan. You were well warned.’

  Yes, but she had been naïve enough to believe that marriage to her would cure him of despondencies, worries, and forebodings whose sources she now knew lay far back in his childhood,
though their causes today might be the cynicism of statesmen, the inadequacy of pity in the face of hunger and disease, or even his inability to express in poetry something he felt deeply. She had been sure that at least she could help him to get over those moods more quickly, and she had been right; but now she was realizing that the cost had been the loss of much of her own self-confidence. As she shivered in his arms, listening to his anguished murmurs of comfort and love, she felt the burden of optimism to be too heavy. Even as he kissed her, angry with himself because of her tears, she was remembering, with longing and regret, the peace of mind she had found on her knees beside the murdered body of her sister. Not only had Ling been killed, but also joy and hope, and hatred of evil and desire for revenge. It was an emptiness to which, in spite of her love for him, she had often been tempted to return; and now that temptation was stronger than it had ever been.

  Two days later the reply from Laura Johnstone arrived.

  In that mud-built city of nameless streets and unnumbered houses, letters had to be addressed in care of some well-known institution such as an Embassy or Ministry. Previously the Moffatts’ mail had been sent to the British Embassy, from which it would be returned in a day or so by the runner; but Moffatt once had intercepted the old postman at the local sub-post office, where he called to drink a cup of tea and say his prayers, and had persuaded him to take his bag of Embassy mail first to the Moffatts’ house. The old man, hook-nosed and bearded like an amiable Punch, had agreed without any fuss, though the sub-postmaster, younger and more ambitious, kept assuring them both it was against the law, until a little baksheesh changed his tune. So every three or four days the postman on his decrepit red bicycle arrived at the gate, rang the bell, and when either Lan or Harold appeared, untied the bundle and let them rummage through it. If there were letters for them, he was delighted; if not, he would promise to bring some ‘farda,’ that was, tomorrow. Indeed, that was the nickname they had given him, because whenever he met them, on the street, or in the park he would wave and shout ‘Farda!’ He seemed too typically a peasant to be able to appreciate the longing that exiles often have for letters of any kind, and yet a bond had grown between him and Lan especially. If there was a letter from her people for her, he would have it out ready, having recognized it by its stamp. Usually she gave him a copper or two as baksheesh; he took it with a smile and a murmur that it didn’t matter. Despite his poverty, his indifference to the money struck her as genuine.

  Lan and Harold were still seated at lunch when the gate bell jangled. They knew it was the old postman.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Harold.

  She got up and watched from the window as he stood in the gateway, joking with the old man and looking through the letters. Three he took out and stuffed into his trouser pocket. The rest he handed back. The postman tied them together with his hairy string, placed them carefully in his dusty bag, put this into the carrier of his bicycle, waved, and cycled away. Lan could hear a dog bark as it dashed after him.

  When Harold came in she was again seated at table.

  ‘Three,’ he said. ‘One an advertisement, another I fancy is a rejected poem, and this, if I’m not mistaken, is what you’ve been waiting for. At any rate the postmark’s Manchester.’ He still kept her waiting as he pretended to study the postmark. ‘Now I wonder what Laura’s got to say to a sympathetic approach. I’ve a feeling she’ll have been put out of her stride somewhat. Yes, you’ll be rather sternly thanked, but you’ll also be told it’s none of your bloody business.’

  At last, with what both of them knew was a malicious reluctance, though both pretended it was meant playfully, he threw the letter towards her end of the table. It fell against the butter dish.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s sugar it could do with, I suppose, not butter.’

  She picked it up, wiped it calmly on her table napkin, and then tore open the envelope. ‘I think you’re wrong about Miss Johnstone.’

  He grinned across the table at her. ‘Are you basing that on stylistic evidence? Or does she reveal a heart of gold?’

  ‘Did you know she’s lame?’

  ‘Lame? What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s permanently lame. She has been since a child.’

  He was silent. ‘Does she say so?’

  ‘Yes. But I knew before; Wahab told me.’

  ‘When? After I flung the whisky in his face? I’ve wondered what confidences you shared in the bathroom while you were bathing his poor brown eyes. Lame? The silly bitch, if she comes here, she’ll soon feel she did it by walking all the way from Manchester.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, can’t you see? Can’t you use your imagination? Lame!’

  ‘You speak as if it were vile.’

  ‘So it is, here. I thought she’d have at least her two feet to stand on or to kick him with. How does it affect her?’

  ‘He told me she was able to dance, as long as it was slow enough.’

  He hid his face in his hands, not in shame, but rather in a kind of desperate sorrow.

  ‘What does she say?’

  ‘Do you want to read it?’

  ‘No. Read it to me.’

  She hesitated, wondering whether she should or not. It was important that their own lives be kept as far apart as possible from those of Miss Johnstone and Wahab. For that reason she now regretted her offer of hospitality, which Miss Johnstone had accepted; but excuses could be found for withdrawing it. The tone of the letter was not emotional, but even if she read it in a flat voice she would inevitably be identifying herself with the writer. Her very hands, holding the letter, had, as Harold had so bitterly pointed out, bathed Wahab’s eyes. Now as she looked at them, she found herself wishing she could change them and with them her whole being. Perhaps, she suddenly thought, with a pang that seemed for a moment to stop the beating of her heart, that is the key to the mystery: all I need to do is to transform myself into any shape so long as it is human and my skin is white and my eyes not oval. Even Miss Johnstone’s shape would do, in spite of her lameness. In spite of his sneers about Miss Johnstone’s massive knees, he had been impressed by her photograph.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather you read it yourself, Harold.’

  ‘Why? For God’s sake, don’t make a fuss about it. It’s not important. I don’t care if I never see it or hear it. Surely you know that?’

  Then the gate bell rang. A car had stopped outside. Lan waited, wetting her lips, as if about to begin reading the letter. They heard Sofi dash out to open the gate. The caller said, in a pleasant American drawl, but excellent Persian: ‘Are Mr and Mrs Moffatt at home?’

  ‘Christ, just what we needed,’ muttered Harold, getting to his feet. ‘I think I’ll go and hide in the bathroom. Descent of the angel. St Manson to the rescue. He’s come with the holy secotine, Lan; he’s heard we’ve fallen apart.’

  She rose too. ‘Don’t mock him. He’s a good man.’

  ‘How true, and how bloody irrelevant. A damn sight better than me. Do I go out to remote villages to smear ointment on syphilitic sores? Do I pray for hours beside dying babies? Is Jesus my chum?’

  She had hurried out into the hall to welcome their visitor.

  After a long glance at the letter which she had dropped on the table, Harold went into the sitting room. In a cabinet there was an assortment of bottles – whisky, brandy, gin, sherry. He poured himself out some whisky. The Reverend Manson P. Powrie, minister of the American Church in Kabul, the only non-Moslem church in the country, was a more fanatical abstainer than the Moslems themselves; but with benign grimaces he tolerated the vice in others just as he tolerated other vices, with one exception, it was said: fornication. Yet he was married himself, and in slightly over five years had begot four children. Now in the hall he was warmly apologizing for having come at such an inconvenient time. ‘If I’ve interrupted you good folks at your lunch, I’m awfully sorry. Really you should just open the door, Mrs Moffatt, a
nd show me out again.’

  Assuring him that they had finished lunch and that he was very welcome, Lan showed him into the sitting room where Harold rose out of an armchair, with a glass of whisky in his hand.

  ‘How are you, Harold? I’ve just been telling your good wife how awfully absent-minded I’m becoming. I even forget folks have got to eat.’

  With four kids, the eldest four, no wonder you’re glad to skip your own meals, thought Moffatt. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘We had just finished. A pity, otherwise you could have joined us.’

  ‘No, no. But thank you, thank you indeed.’

  ‘Please sit down.’

  The minister did so. ‘I don’t aim to waste too much of your valuable time. Maybe I’m interrupting masterpieces of painting and poetry.’ He laughed. ‘The fact is, Harold, I’ve come because a countrywoman of yours telephoned me and suggested I should come to consult you.’

  Harold studied the minister, who was about his own age and whose combination of moral superiority and intellectual simpleness always fascinated him. Ludicrously dressed for an apostle, in mauve open-neck shirt and cream pants with thin black vertical stripes, he was nevertheless the kind of man who, on hearing Christ preach, would have followed Him and, through gold-rimmed spectacles, seen every miracle; whereas Harold himself would have remained in the background, with many clever sceptical remarks. What he had said about Powrie’s expeditions to remote villages with medicines was true. And it could not be charged against the minister that he was curing their bodies of pain in order to entrap their souls into Christianity. In Afghanistan, proselytism was forbidden. Let Powrie try to convert one Moslem and he would be out of the country in a week, with his church closed.

  ‘Yes, Harold, Mrs Gillie, your Consul’s wife, phoned and told me about some English girl who’s coming out here to marry an Afghan. She explained she didn’t know what the girl’s attitude is about religion, but thought you might know. I certainly would be prepared to marry her, if she wished that, but what’s most important of course is that we all unite to give this girl a really Christian welcome. You good folks have begun the good work already, I believe. She’s going to live with you until she’s found her feet.’