Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

‘You’ll be fine in, oh, a week or ten days,’ he’d said and Hiroko, even in her enfeebled state, had whispered, ‘Do you know somewhere I can go?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ Elizabeth’s voice was both stern and kind. ‘You’ll stay here. There’s no further conversation to be had about this.’

Later, as Dr Agarkar was leaving, Hiroko heard James talking to him in the hallway.

‘Yes, a telegram came from that Watanabe fellow — Julian Fuller’s cousin in Nagasaki. Did you know Julian — he was here in, oh, ’34 or ’35. Company man. Uncle married a Jap. Anyway, turns out there really was something between her and Konrad. And she’s lost everyone, the telegram said. Everyone. Poor girl. I feel such a brute.’

‘So she’s staying with you while she’s in Delhi?’

‘I suppose, yes. At least until she gets better. After that, well, I don’t know. We’ll see how we get on. Might do Elizabeth some good to have someone to mother again. Did your wife get like this when Ravi went to Eton?’

Hiroko was asleep before the doctor answered. When she woke up, Elizabeth was sitting by her bed, her slumped shoulders suggesting she’d been there a while. Hiroko smiled, Elizabeth smiled back, and then Hiroko was asleep again.

Two days later, Hiroko was finally awake long enough to start feeling bored.

‘I’ll read to you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Any preferences?’

‘Evelyn Waugh.’

‘Really? How strange.’

‘That’s what Konrad said. He said Waugh is for readers who know the English and understand what’s being satirised. And I told him that maybe the books are better when you don’t know it’s satire and just think it’s comedy.’

Elizabeth considered this.

‘You’re probably right. I find him much too cruel. And almost unbearably sad.’

Hiroko’s fingers moved just slightly so they were almost touching Elizabeth’s hand as it rested on the coverlet. It was a gesture so astutely poised between discretion and sympathy that Elizabeth found herself imagining a life in which Konrad had brought Hiroko into this house as a sister-in-law.

‘Perhaps after you’ve spent some time among us you’ll see the satire.’

‘Oh, I see it already,’ Hiroko said, nodding, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

But Elizabeth Burton was laughing as she hadn’t laughed in a very long time. She took Hiroko’s hand in hers and held on firmly.

‘Forget this boarding-house nonsense. You’re staying here. We’re practically sisters, after all.’

James Burton, standing in the doorway, watched his wife’s face glow with laughter, and nodded. Hiroko was far from convinced that living with the Burtons was an ideal situation but she was too weak to feel anything but gratitude for the continued offer of a bed to sleep in.

A couple of mornings ago she had woken feeling much stronger — a greater relief than she allowed anyone else to know; she had feared the radiation sickness which had so incapacitated her in ’45 might have returned or simply reawoken from some state of dormancy, as the doctors had warned might happen. But as soon as she felt herself returning to strength she dismissed such thoughts with the briskness with which she had once dismissed Konrad’s repeated suggestions that it wasn’t prudent for her to continue meeting a German in Nagasaki, and decided it was time to start finding a way to fill her days. She had come to feel a greater affection towards the Burtons during her convalescence than she had imagined possible on her first day in Delhi but she knew she needed something beyond their company to occupy her.

She thought she had a perfect solution but her suggestion that someone in Delhi must have need of a translator who could speak English, German and Japanese met with little enthusiasm from the Burtons. Dr Agarkar was called in to inform her she was not yet well enough to go ‘gadding around’, though Hiroko half suspected he only said so as an act of friendship to the Burtons, who seemed to think their hospitality was being called into question if their guest found employment.

So Hiroko turned to the next option that announced itself to her.

‘I’d like to learn the language they speak here,’ she had said.

‘It’s not necessary. English serves you fine. The natives you’ll meet are either the Oxbridge set and their wives or household staff like Lala Buksh, who can understand simple English if you just know a clutch of Urdu words to throw into the mix. Those Elizabeth can teach you,’ James had said.

It was the oddest thing Hiroko had ever heard.

‘Even so, I’d like to learn how to read and write,’ she said. ‘Is there anyone.?’

‘Sajjad,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He used to teach Henry — my son.’ Her upper lip didn’t really stiffen, Hiroko thought, but there was some subtle shift around her mouth suggesting tamped-down pain at the mention of the child sent a year ago to boarding school in England, from where he wrote letters to his parents saying he wanted to be ‘home, in India’.

‘He doesn’t have the time for that,’ said James. ‘You know I can’t let him work half-days now. I don’t have an office full of clerks any more.’

‘You still have the office, James. You just choose to pretend your leg isn’t healed well enough for you to go to it. And in any case, you and Sajjad do nothing but play chess all day.’ Let the boy work for his salary again, Elizabeth thought to herself. She had been profoundly annoyed by Sajjad’s acceptance of the raise James had given him at the start of the month; it seemed not just dishonest, but impudent.

Hiroko slipped off the sofa and went to look through the bookshelves, hoping by her movements to remind the Burtons she was in the room before they started one of their more unpleasant arguments, and wondered if Sajjad would mind being asked to play the role of teacher. She should have asked him first, she realised. Coming from the Burtons it would be a command rather than a request. But much to her relief, when James grudg ingly broached the subject later that day, Sajjad seemed delighted.

‘I will teach you the chaste Urdu of Ghalib and Mir so that you can read the poets of Delhi.’ Seeing James’s look of unhappiness, he added, ‘And since you say you wake up early, Miss Tanaka, perhaps we could have our lessons before Mr Burton and I commence our day’s business.’

James had smiled broadly and Elizabeth didn’t know whether it was Sajjad, James or herself who she wanted to hit for the effortlessness with which the Indian could delight her husband.

Hiroko bent her face into the steam that rose from the teacup, its warmth a pleasant contrast to the chill of Delhi’s winter-morning air, and hoped Sajjad wouldn’t arrive soon. It was rare, and welcome, this feeling of being alone in the Burton house, no need to modulate her expressions so that nothing in them would give cause for concern or offence. When either James or Elizabeth was around she always had to look busily engaged with something to avoid provoking a panicked stir of conversation or activity; they behaved as though she had lost Nagasaki only yesterday, and their joint role in her world was to distract her from mourning. It was kind, but trying.

She rubbed her thumb along the interlacings of the green cane chair. And this world, too, was ending. A year or two, no more, James had told her, and then the British would go. It seemed the most extraordinary privilege — to have forewarning of a swerve in history, to prepare for how your life would curve around that bend. She had no idea what she planned to do beyond Delhi. Beyond next week. And why plan anyway? She had left such hubris behind. For the moment it was enough to be here, in the Burton garden, appreciative of a blanket of silence threaded with vibrant bird calls, knowing there was nothing here she couldn’t leave without regret.