The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Late in the afternoon, tickling Habib’s double chin with a long blade of grass, a shadow blocked the sun. I looked up to see a short, stocky man in a dirty blue shirt and even dirtier pants. He had a half-grown beard, and his lined brown face and red-rimmed eyes looked tired and drawn. He stared down at me and Habib, then ducked his head inside the empty tent.

  “Mahayna!” he roared, although it was obvious the tent was empty. Habib screamed at the unexpected sound, and I picked him up and held him against me.

  “She brings water from the stream,” I shouted over the baby’s howls, but the man stared at me blankly, and I realized he didn’t speak Hindi. He dropped a sack he held over his shoulder. A woman sitting in the doorway of the tent across from us yelled something at the grizzled man, and he turned his back to me and crossed his thick arms over his barrel chest, standing with his legs apart and his eyes fixed in the direction of the stream.

  In a few moments Mahayna swayed into view, gracefully balancing a dripping earthenware pot on her head. Seeing the man, she quickly set it down and reached out her arms to Habib.

  “It is my husband, Bhosla,” she said, her voice slightly breathless. “He has not been down from the hills for two weeks.” Settling the baby in her sling, she immediately stooped over the black pot and dished up a huge bowl of fish and wild mushroom stew. She handed it to her husband with downcast eyes, and he barked a sentence at her, tossing his head in my direction. She answered in a quiet current of sentences, her tone curiously flat as it never was when she spoke to me or the other women.

  Her answer satisfied Bhosla. He squatted, his back still to me, and finished the stew in a few enormous slurps.

  I felt the strain. “I will go for a walk,” I said, seeing Mahayna’s expression. She nodded, distractedly, already pulling a pile of clothing from the grimy sack tossed on the ground. I could smell the greasy sweat that rose from it.

  I walked through the tents until I came to the low stone wall that contained the sick goat. I leaned on the wall, idly contemplating the flea-bitten creature. A boy climbed up and perched atop the wall not far from me, whistling to the animal. It was a strange, high, trembling sound that reminded me of both a flute and the cry of a hawk. Every time the boy whistled, the goat turned its dull sulphur eyes toward him and circled feebly, first in one direction and then another, in confused obedience.

  I looked to the gently sloping green hills surrounding this valley. Beyond them were the mountains, their tops hidden, the clouds that floated by caught on those snowy peaks. Were these the same mountains I had seen in Simla, viewed from another direction? I thought of the marking on the maps I had studied back in Calcutta, wondering exactly where I was, and if I would ever know.

  I left the boy and the goat and wandered to an open patch of grass where a group of children raced about. It was a cruel game of some sort. All the children chased one boy or girl, and when the victim was caught, he or she was subjected to cruel slaps and hair-pulling by the others, who laughed loudly. From what I could see, the object of the game was to fight back, withstanding as much pain as possible. One small boy burst into angry tears after a particularly hard poke in the eye by a larger girl, and at the sight of his red squalling face the group walked away from him. Ostracized, his fist pressing his eye, he tramped to a rock and plunked himself down, forlornly watching the continuing game from a distance.

  When the children lost interest and scampered off in different directions, I walked to the horse enclosures. One held a milling pack of horses, and in another, a lone figure stood in the center of the flat stony area, a short-handled whip in one hand and, wound around the other, a rope attached to the bridle of a plunging, pulling, wild-eyed golden stallion. As the man turned, I saw that it was Daoud.

  He wore only his trousers and high leather riding boots, and his chest and back were wet with his exertions under the warm sun. He had tied his hair back with a leather thong, and with the black waves away from his face, I could see the strong clean line of his jaw, the long smoothness of his neck. He had put larger, wider hoops in his ears. He called commands to the snorting animal as he worked with it. His face was changed; not only had much of the swelling gone down, although it was still discolored, but it was the expression. It was not the strained, disdainful countenance I had first seen as he was dragged to the jail in Simla. It was not the guarded face he had worn for much of the time I was with him as we rode to Kashmir. Now it was alive, free. I believe it was his true face.

  He didn’t see me. I rested my arms along the top of the rough log of the fence and watched. Eventually the horse exhausted itself and stood with its head low, blowing noisily through flared nostrils. Daoud, crooning softly, approached the heaving animal, putting his palm against the broad forehead. The animal’s head snapped up, sending off clots of bubbling foam, but it didn’t run. Daoud stared into its eyes, and very slowly, let out a long, low whistle, as he had to Rasool when the horse trembled with fear in the cave. The stallion lowered its head again. Daoud also lowered his, until his own forehead was pressed against the golden one. They stood unmoving for at least a full minute. Then Daoud lifted his head and gave a mild tug on the rope, walking toward the gate. The horse followed. At the gate, Daoud slipped the bridle off, and the horse turned and ran across the enclosure, kicking behind him with coltish pleasure. Daoud watched, smiling, then opened the leather latch and slipped through the gate. As he retied the latch, I called out. “A magnificent horse.”

  He looked in my direction. “Yes,” he answered. Something closed over his expression, and I was sorry to see that my presence had done this. He wound the thongs of his whip around his hand. “You are well treated?”

  I nodded. I wanted to say something, but was confused by the anxiety that overtook me.

  “You have the clothes of a bakriwar, a goat woman, but your face and your hair—they do not fit,” he said, and, like the fool that I felt, I simply nodded.

  He came toward me, and my breathing quickened, but he walked by, and I smelled his glistening sweat-soaked skin.

  “Wait,” I said, and he turned back to me. “I—when will I go back?”

  Daoud studied the clouds over my head before he spoke. “If you wish, I can arrange that you leave tomorrow.”

  When he didn’t say any more, I realized he was waiting for me to answer. Why didn’t I say yes, yes, I must go right away, tomorrow, as soon as possible? What stopped me?

  “Although it would be difficult if you do want to leave immediately,” he added unexpectedly.

  “Difficult? Why?”

  He played with the soft rawhide plaits of his whip. I watched his hands. “There is only one gujar boy here who can be trusted with the task of leading you through the mountains, and he is also our only syce. The journey to Simla and then back again will take seven to eight days. It will take us those eight days—maybe ten—to finishing training the horses here before we take them to Peshawar. The syce will be most important to my men at this time. But I gave my promise that I would see you returned to Simla. If you are most anxious to go, then I will arrange—”

  “No.” Had I said no?

  Daoud’s face now wore a curious expression. He tapped his whip softly against his thigh. “Will your people not worry?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He held the whip still. “So you will remain for a while longer, here, at the camp? This is your wish?”

  Perhaps ten seconds passed before I answered. “Yes. It is my wish.”

  “So be it,” Daoud said, then turned on his heel and strode away, leaving me alone in the still, fragrant late afternoon air of Kashmir. With him gone I felt a loss.

  And as I watched him walk away I knew now the name of this emotion I was struggling to understand.

  Desire.

  Chapter Thirty

  WHAT HAD I IMAGINED DESIRE TO BE? I HAD THOUGHT IT must be a small thing, a thing that arose momentarily and settled only in that part of the body that was to be used; when satisfied, it ret
urned mindlessly to its deeply hidden lair. I didn’t know that it had its own life, that it would fill all of one’s being, that it would infect even the brain. That it was impossible to push away. It took me close to twenty years to learn this, even though for seven of those years—between the ages of eleven and seventeen—I was used as an object of desire. No. That is wrong. I was used as an object of lust, and it was at this same time, when desire came awake in me, that I also learned the difference between the two.

  And why did it take this seemingly uninterested man, this man who had no connection to me or to any part of my life, to make me understand—finally see what drove men and women, men and men, women and women—together? Perhaps it is this very inexplicable part of desire that renders its victims helpless.

  Daoud walked away from me at the enclosure. He had never touched me other than placing his hands around my waist as he lifted me on and off Rasool. I knew he had rubbed mud—it must have been carefully, softly—around the wound on my shoulder to stop the bleeding after he had dug out the bullet with the smouldering end of a stick, but I had been unconscious. He probably cursed his momentary decision to pull me from the meadow, especially when his conscience made him keep me with him, slowing his journey back to Kashmir. His eyes had showed mild surprise at my appearance in the bakriwar clothing. I knew what I must appear to him—small and weak, insignificant compared to the strong, capable women surrounding me now. But something about the way the ends of the whip played through his long fingers, the way his ribs gleamed faintly from his breastbone . . . I felt a strange movement within some deep part of me, low, in my abdomen, growing soft and pliant. I stayed at the enclosure, wondering at these feelings, as the air turned cooler and the rich smell of cooking meat sent a rush of saliva into my mouth. I didn’t remember when I had last felt hunger like this. I had, daily for years, known the aching, burning gnaw of a hungry belly, but this was something different.

  And I looked forward to eating with an anticipation that was also new and good, a yearning that matched the rest of my turbulent feelings.

  I returned to Mahayna’s tent. She was sitting by the fire, holding a small bowl to Habib’s mouth. “Bhosla sleeps,” she said. “He has gone without proper food and rest for many days. Some of the goats fell ill from eating a poisonous shrub, and he and the other men have worked night and day to save them.”

  “Is he angry about me sharing your tent?” I sensed she was explaining her husband’s behavior.

  “No,” Mahayna said, shaking her head so that the long earrings slapped her cheeks. “You are welcome in our tent.” She said the words with confidence, but didn’t look at me, picking at something in the baby’s scalp. “Eat,” she said then, and I pulled stringy strips of meat from the pot with my fingers, tearing at them, feeling juice and grease run down my chin. I ate and ate, as if insatiable.

  “I saw Daoud training a horse,” I said, when I had finished. I wiped my hands on the grass, then ran my finger over the etched surface of the silver bracelet Mahayna had given me to wear that morning. I thought of the sweat on Daoud’s smooth chest, how I had wanted to put my hand out and press my fingers against it.

  Mahayna made a sound in her throat, a small sound, amused. I looked at her.

  “You will go to him, I think,” she said.

  I shook my head, feeling my earrings swing against my cheeks the way I had seen Mahayna’s earlier. My face grew hot. “Why do you say this? He is a chief and I a ferenghi. He has two wives. I have a husband.”

  Mahayna shrugged. “Your husband has not given you children. He beats you. This is reason enough to seek comfort elsewhere.”

  She said it, as she said everything, so simply. Seeking comfort. That coupling could be comfort was an odd concept. Sex meant release, I understood, for men. For women it meant children. Comfort? I looked at the distant silver of the sun, hurrying to rest behind the mountains. Mahayna and I sat in silence as the night sky grew black, and after she had nursed Habib until he fell asleep I followed her inside the tent and bundled myself in my quilt in the crowded space. Mahayna put Habib in a pile of skins in one corner and lay between me and Bhosla.

  I THOUGHT IT WAS the camp dogs that woke me, although this wasn’t their usual thin yapping in the distance. It was a hoarse, rhythmic barking. I turned over, pulling the quilt around my ears, when a sudden stifled whisper made me tense and waken fully in the darkness. I opened my eyes, making out the curve of the tent wall. The whisper came again, now angry, from behind me. It was Mahayna. Then the guttural sound started again, and I realized it wasn’t the dogs at all, but Bhosla with Mahayna. I listened as his grunting grew louder and more urgent, culminating in a hissing groan. In only a few moments there was a muffled thump, followed by rumbling snores.

  I lay stiffly, aware that my shoulder was aching; I was lying on my wounded one. Sleep had gone. I waited until I heard Mahayna’s quiet, even breaths between the rasps of Bhosla’s snores. Then I threw back my quilt and silently crawled through the tent opening.

  Millions of stars shone brightly in the clear night sky. The light from a gibbous moon outlined the edges of the still camp; a breeze that carried the deep green smell of the mountains stirred the leaves of the tall birch and graceful poplars. I took the goatskin cover off the large earthenware pot of water beside the tent, splashing some of it on my hot cheeks and taking a long drink.

  I walked through the camp, realizing I was not the only one awake. In one tent a child whimpered, in another men’s voices rose in angry bursts. I heard muffled weeping in another. A small white dog soundlessly charged at me from the shadows, its hackles standing straight, but after a few concerned sniffs at my feet it trotted away, tail high and rigid with its own importance. Something about the dog’s acceptance of me gave me a heightened sense of my own belonging such as I had never felt in Liverpool or in Calcutta or even Simla.

  Finally I arrived at the horse enclosure. It was the only place I knew to come, the only place that called to me. I pressed my forehead against the hard roughness of the wooden fence, thinking of the press of Daoud’s forehead against the golden stallion’s earlier that day. The stallion and three smaller horses raised their heads in the air, alert in their far corner. I wanted to say his name. “Daoud.” It was little more than a whisper, but there was a sudden rustle behind me, and I whirled around.

  He was sitting on a thick quilt, his back against a huge red-barked deodar. A chapan was thrown beside him. Had he heard me utter his name?

  “You pray for your friend?” he asked, and I was first filled with relief, and then burned with shame. Him thinking I was mourning Faith, praying to a spirit, when my thoughts were base, and all too human.

  I stayed at the fence. I couldn’t see his face. Just his boots and legs, stretched out in front of him.

  “And you long for your husband,” he stated. Not a question.

  I was so tired of lying, of secrets. “Yes, I miss my friend, and mourn for her. Her death is like—like a heavy rock, here.” I put my hand on my chest. But I don’t care if I ever again see my husband, I wanted to say, the exhilaration at being able to speak my thoughts growing ever stronger. “But it is not true that I long for my husband.”

  I had never longed for another person, except my mother. I knew the feeling as it related to her. But had I longed for Shaker the night he wept as I let him take me in his narrow bed in Everton? For any of the young men I had danced with in the Calcutta salons? For Somers, even when I felt an unsettling confusion at the wrath I was able to stir within him? Had I ever longed to be near a man, to smell the scent of him? No. I moved closer to the edge of the quilt, trying to see Daoud’s face.

  Suddenly he stood, and I took a step back. “You should return to Mahayna’s tent,” he said, and I knew I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here. This is what I had hoped to find when I came to the enclosure.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. I was trembling, although not cold. “Why are you here, and not in a tent?” I asked.

/>   “I am happier sleeping under the sky. And I like to be near the horses,” he said. He stepped forward, picking up the chapan. He handed it to me.

  I took the cape and put it around my shoulders. It was warm, thickly woven in myriad colors, heavy with the smell of woodsmoke.

  “It is best if you go,” he said, and when I continued to stay, he came even closer. I looked up at him.

  “Go, Linny Gow,” he said, and at the sound of my name from his lips the feelings that were confounding me swept in with such force that I turned and ran, rushing through the scattered tents in my soft shoes, making the dogs bay.

  THE NEXT DAY I worked beside Mahayna, my hands moving in the proper ways. I was thankful Bhosla was there, as Mahayna didn’t speak to me while he was present. I didn’t want to talk, afraid that if I did I would say things that I didn’t fully understand yet, afraid I would give away my yearning. To speak it aloud, giving it a name, frightened me.

  Finally Bhosla left, dressed in clean clothing and carrying a sack of more clothing and an enormous pack of food on his back. Within minutes Mahayna was humming, chattering. I answered, but couldn’t stop thinking of the power Daoud held over me.

  All the men I had known had wanted something—the endless stream of customers; Ram, using me for the easy coins he didn’t have to work for; Shaker, wanting love in a needy way that was smothering; Somers, wanting his inheritance and a cover for his lifestyle. And perhaps someone to bully. They all made use of me for something they wanted or needed. And by using me, they made me into an object.

  Daoud wanted nothing. He appeared to need nothing; he appeared complete—a complete human being. This realization, coming slowly to me as I worked alongside Mahayana, was like warm water on my soul—he expected nothing of me, asked for nothing, and there was no need for me to fabricate any part of my life, as I had since Shaker had brought me to his home on Whitefield Lane. I was so weary of the lies I had to keep up with every single person I had met since then—first in Liverpool and then in the false image of England created in India.