Tariq Ali - Night of the Golden Butterfly

‘I thought it was repressed homosexuality that sent him scurrying back to India.’

‘Another way of putting it could be that it was the unrepressed homosexuality of the great mathematician who invited him here that frightened the poor catamite.’

‘Both of us could be right.’

‘Let’s avoid Punjabi melodrama. I think he died of tuberculosis that he contracted here, but I’m not sure.’

It was a crisp November day, but bitterly cold. We had walked for an hour by the river and a friendly poet at Kings gave us lunch. Plato never spoke much in company and when he did there was no artifice. That is why I was puzzled by his failure to tell me he was dying. It would have been in character for him to joke about it and regret that he wasn’t a Believer, otherwise he could have looked forward to at least one houri and his ailment instantaneously cured. Ours was a heaven for old men. When we were driving back from Cambridge, he expressed no regrets. All he would say is that one can never completely determine the path that one’s life takes. Other factors always intervene to shape our biographies. I asked if he was thinking of anything specific.

‘If there had been no Partition I might have come here.’

‘But you would never have had time to paint.’

‘I would not have needed to paint.’

Zaynab ordered more coffee.

‘Perhaps you should have left him the poison capsule.’

‘He would be dead by now, and he is desperate to finish the painting.’

‘He never will. He can’t. He knows that and all he’ll do is to carry on enriching the colours.’

‘Listen to me, Dara. I hired two nurses to be with him at all times. There is a doctor on call who has promised me to make his last hours easy. I just could not bear to be there when he died. He knew that, which is why he asked me to leave the country.’

I believed her. Suddenly I had a desperate urge to speak to him one last time. To say a few things I had never said to him. About how important he’d been for all of us. Of how the pleasure he took in defying public opinion had infected us, who were a generation younger, and how his unceasing attacks on time-servers and opportunists during a military dictatorship had given us courage.

‘Zaynab, ring the nurse, please. I want to speak with him.’

She dialled the number. There was no reply.

‘Keep trying, keep trying.’

Finally the nurse answered. She was in an ambulance. Plato had collapsed some hours ago and was unconscious. They were taking him to the hospital. Zaynab and I embraced each other and wept. We spent most of that day in the Louvre, walking in a daze, sitting for a long time in front of a Poussin, thinking of Plato all the time and wondering whether he was already dead. When we returned to her hotel there were dozens of messages. We did not eat, but went straight up. We wept first and then laughed as we sat on the bed and talked about him. We paused to drink some cognac and went to bed, but sleep came fitfully. Images of Plato at different stages of his life kept me half awake, and when I trembled, Zaynab’s soothing hands would massage my head.

Plato had left firm instructions regarding his burial. No protection money was to be paid to secure a place in any graveyard. He was quite happy to be eaten by dogs. Zaynab had suggested that since his painting of the dead hound for her dead brother had enhanced the value of the Shah estates, he should be buried close to where she had first sighted him. Pir Sikandar Shah accordingly arranged for Plato’s body to be transported to his lands and he was Buried in the Shah family graveyard, but without any headstone, as is the custom in that region.

‘I can talk to him when I next visit the prison of my youth. May I ask you something?’

It was obvious that we were going to spend this day doing nothing, but I needed a brisk walk and Zaynab showed no inclination to get dressed.

‘What?’

‘If you were asked to describe me to someone who had no idea of me, what would you say?’

‘A Sindhi matron whose natural beauty is inextricably linked to her pride.’

‘Why matron? Am I really getting plump, you unfeeling hound? Apart from “matron” I liked that description.’

‘“Matron” stays. It denotes maturity and authority more than plumpness.’

‘When the Stepford lady was questioning me about intimate matters you did not speak at all. Does that mean you had no thoughts, or were they repressed?’

‘I did think that, for your peasant paramour, making love to you must be like having a nun for a mistress, not that he would have got the reference. Not that you were a nun. A nun is full of piety, and the sin of having a lover provides her with an exceptional frisson that can’t be faked. The piety produces the passion. In your case, I think, there was neither. Just simple mechanics.’

‘You can think what you like. Was it simple mechanics this morning?’

‘I wasn’t referring to us.’

‘Good. Yesterday was a bit sorrowful. I kept hearing a Sindhi lament in my head as I tried to arouse you. Do you have to leave today?’

‘I must. I have to prepare a talk for a conference. I need a few days in the library’

‘That seems excessive. When is your Chinese friend returning from the murder inquiry in Isloo?’

‘How did you know about that?’

‘I made it my business. My brother says they have no idea who killed the general. It wasn’t the usual suspects who are blamed for everything these days.’

‘I never thought it was, but why are you so interested?’

‘Because you are, and I feel linked through you. I thought if I discovered something you could pass it on to your friend. What my brother did say was that General Rafiq had several mistresses.’

‘A crime of passion?’

‘Always possible and not just in beloved Fatherland. And there will be another one if you ever turn your back on me. I like you.’

‘Remain calm. We’re both matrons and must preserve a certain decorum. No reason to regress to our teen years. Sorry, that doesn’t apply to you.’

‘When will you be back?’

‘Within a fortnight.’

‘Should I buy an apartment in Paris or London? Has to be a big city.’

‘Berlin.’

‘So I can leave you in peace to take a Chinese mistress in London. No way. I’m buying an apartment in London. Prices are dropping more and more each day, and Alice has sighted a suitable buy.’

I sat down and shook her.

‘Listen to me carefully. Jindié is a friend from the past who lives with Zahid, another friend, whom I once wronged. She is not my mistress.’

‘She will be soon. Of this I’m sure. Let’s not argue. We’ll both know when it happens. As a matter of fact I prefer Paris. Let’s go and see apartments today.’

‘In the Fauborg St-Germain?’

‘Why not? I want something in the Latin Quarter and wouldn’t it be fun if I found something nice on the rue de Balzac. And which of Stendhal’s novels should I read first?’

‘Difficult. Buy them all and toss a coin. How lucky you are to read them in French. I love them all, but if you put a gun to my head I’d say Lucien Leuwen . That and the two best-known ones need to be reread every two years, and at my age every six months. One always learns something new. I would also strongly recommend his thinly disguised memoir.’

‘By the time you return I’ll have finished them. I read very fast.’

‘Does understanding keep up with your pace?’

‘Does insolence keep up with the charm?’

‘Rewrite.’

She was serious enough about buying a flat, and we spent a few hours in various streets looking at available property. She liked one on the rue de Bièvre, and when I pointed out that Mitterand and a Polish Marxist intellectual had once shared the street, adding that Balzac’s favourite eatery was here, she became agitated. The agent was rung. The apartment was huge for such a small street, but she would have friends to stay over and would be entertaining regularly. There was no haggling. She would pay the asking price. The agent gave me an astonished look as if to ask whether she was serious. I suggested that he close the deal quickly before she saw something on the rue de Balzac.