Tariq Ali - Night of the Golden Butterfly

‘The monster can stay. Ask whatever you wish.’

‘Are you a virgin?’

For the first time that evening, her face clouded over, and for a moment it seemed that Alice had crossed a heavily protected frontier. Zaynab sighed, then said, ‘I don’t mind the question at all. Plato asked me exactly the same one and became quite upset when I replied truthfully, and it was the memory of his sadness that I was thinking about when you repeated the question. No, I’m not a virgin. Technically, if I can put it like that, I deflowered myself with a candle when I was seventeen. That was also the year I was beginning to read Balzac, not that the two events are linked in any fashion. It’s just that when I started rereading him many years later, memories of the candle I had burnt at my altar always reappeared. The maids had replaced the sheets very quickly. They were my only confidantes and friends. I told them everything and they never, ever betrayed me. It was the only girl talk that was possible and I enjoyed it greatly. There were no affectations, no melodrama, no feeling that we were entering uncharted or perilous waters. None of that. They were all married and would describe their experiences in great detail. Two of them had husbands who performed like animals. They made the comparison well, because their sex education had consisted of watching stray dogs and donkeys and horses copulating at various times. One of them had a more thoughtful husband who would give her a great deal of pleasure and she was not shy about describing the foreplay. The others would giggle and ask to share him. I actually did.’

Even I jumped up at this point.

‘You did what?’

‘When I first put this proposition to her, she thought that I was teasing and giggled at my joke. I said I was serious and her face went pale as the sand. At first I imagined it might be jealousy on her part. That I would have understood, even though I had not at that time felt the emotion myself, but had read about it a great deal in French novels. If she had been jealous, I would have immediately withdrawn the request. When I made this obvious she was mortified. It wasn’t that at all, she told me. She then admitted she had talked about me to him, told him about the candle and the stained sheet. He had expressed sorrow at my fate and abused the men who had reduced me to these straits.

‘She was sure he would oblige, and for her part she was happy to share him. Had I not after all, she asked, shared much with her and the other maids? Her only fear was that we’d be found out, and there, too, she was not afraid on her own behalf. If he and I were caught we would both be put to death. Him first. They would disembowel and burn him. She could not bear the thought of losing him or me. I reassured her: it was merely an idea and between the idea and the deed there is often a long interval. In any case, everything would have to be very carefully planned.

‘When she informed him of my proposition and her concerns, he immediately calmed her fears. Over the next months we devised a plan. Its details are of no significance. In my situation, melodrama was never far from the surface, and with some reason. And so one day it happened, and everything his wife had confessed regarding their most intimate moments turned out to be true. From that day on, whenever I was menstruating, he would come and pleasure me, except when unforeseen circumstances made the operation risky. That is how I came to experience the delights of being a woman. And you know something, after my first year in Karachi, where I observed the unhappiness of so many women from my class who had been married for some time, and heard their tales of woe about philandering husbands and being abandoned by their children, I did begin to wonder whether being married to the Koran and being pleasured by a man I shared with a dear friend had in some ways been a less cumbersome experience.’

Alice applauded loudly, which grated on me. ‘It’s truly wonderful,’ she crowed. ‘It restores my faith in humanity. When we were young we used to say that marriage was akin to prostitution, since cash dependency made many women prisoners. May I ask how long this business of sharing went on?’

‘It still does, but extremely irregularly. Once or twice a year, I send for him. I once tried a very clever journalist, but his cleverness, alas, was confined to his newspaper columns. He was very stupid and crude in bed and I had to ask him to leave before it went any further. Afterwards when we met on social occasions I think he was more embarrassed than I was.

‘My friendly maid moved to Karachi with me, and so did her children. He would come here once or twice a fortnight to see them. So we’ve never lost contact. He’s also a very sharp-witted observer of what goes on in that world. Often I pass on the things he tells me to Sikandar, who is always amazed by my “spy network”. I wrote a poem about him in Sindhi but it doesn’t sound so good in English. It was in praise of the soil, rich in ardour, that produced such men, compelled to seek the sun inside themselves; their secret passions, concentrated energies that kept their muscles taut and produced a voluptuousness without a trace of languor. Enough. I’m very fond of him, even though our conversations are often limited to issues relating to the land. That is what upset Plato. He found it all quite disconcerting. I told him I would be delighted if he could replace my aging peasant, but he simply couldn’t. We did try.’

‘So did we,’ said Alice, unable to resist the competition. ‘That’s when Dara walked in and served my needs so well. I can recommend him.’

‘All that is over now, praise Allah. My life has changed its course: I’m on a grand tour, first Europe, then China.’

I left to visit the washroom with their mocking laughter in the background. I could see how Plato had fallen so badly for her. She was an amazing creature. Could she be the inspiration for all the mermaids that he now painted? When I returned I asked whether she was his latest muse and model.

‘I am. I sit for him, but he can’t explain why I must always be depicted as a mermaid.’

‘Surely it’s disgustingly obvious,’ said Alice. ‘He doesn’t want to imagine you with private parts. What other possible reason could there be? The role of the mermaid in ancient mythology is essentially that of a prick-teaser.’

The remark irritated me. She was trying to show off. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ally… er, Alice. Mermaids have a totally different function in different…’

‘Please, let’s not argue abut mermaids. I’ve had a really nice evening, but we haven’t yet discussed your Plato, and I’m worried.’

‘Why?’ we asked in unison.

‘His depressions are getting worse, not better. You can see all of this in his latest work. There are days when he is completely suicidal, which is why I never leave this capsule at home. I carry it wherever I go. In a melancholic fit he could grab and swallow it, and where would that leave me? I see less and less of him. He spends more and more time in his studio. Drinking and painting, day and night, as if he were racing against death. The humour in his work has almost disappeared.’

‘But why?’

‘I’m not sure. There is this absurd and foolish rivalry promoted by the press. Is Pervaiz Shah as good as I. M. Malik? Numerous articles, and people who know nothing about art writing long and dull essays on both painters. Even those who praise Plato haven’t a clue as to what he’s about and where his art stems from. Has either of you seen I. M. Malik’s work?’

Alice had never heard of him. I knew him slightly from the past and had seen his paintings at various exhibitions.

‘He’s decorative, shallow, pretentious and this was my opinion long before Plato entered the field. I. M. Malik paints to please and sell. Fair enough, but I can see why it drives Plato crazy. But I can’t totally accept that IMM’s success is the whole cause. Plato knows IMM’s artistic worth perfectly. If you can bear to download images of his latest piece of conceptual art, you’ll see that even old IMM realizes that shit produces money. He has used horse manure, dried cow-dung cakes and pigeon droppings to create a huge birthday cake for his own ninetieth. There is an additional problem. I. M. Malik looks like a shrunken, constipated accountant, which can be slightly off-putting.’