Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

James walked around the house, shoes leaving imprints in the sodden garden, until he was near the window that looked into the family room. What would Elizabeth see of him if she looked out? The man she had married, or an intense gathering of condensation? No one would ever imagine he could think of himself in these terms, he knew, not even Elizabeth. Well, the truth of it was he rarely did. But since Sajjad had gone — been sent away, brought it on himself, of course, but even so — well, he’d just been feeling wrong about the world.

He would never see Sajjad again. This thought kept coming back to him, its insistence an irritation. He kept telling himself that it was the way things had ended which caused him these feelings of regret. Remorse, even. But in moments of real honesty when he heard his wife and Hiroko laughing together, something more than language acting as a barrier between him and them, he knew simply that he missed Sajjad’s company. And that was ridiculous, of course it was.

‘James Burton.’

And now I’m hearing voices, James thought.

‘James Burton!’

James turned. Walking through the mist towards him was Sajjad, dressed as he had been the first time James saw him, and never since, in white-muslin kurta pyjama. A large umbrella was tucked under his arm, leaving a wet imprint down one side of his body.

‘My dear fellow.’ James stepped forward, extending his hand. Sajjad looked at it in confusion, and James laughed and clasped the other man’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t bring a chessboard with you, I suppose.’

Sajjad pulled away.

‘I’m not here to return to my duties.’

‘No, of course not.’ James’s hand was suspended mid-air in the posture of gripping Sajjad’s shoulder, and he looked at it curiously as if not sure what to do with it. Sajjad regarded him in pity, unable to keep up the attacking attitude he had talked himself into, and placed his own hand over the Englishman’s to push it back down.

‘I just read A Passage to India ,’ James said. ‘Ridiculous book. What a disgrace of an ending. The Englishman and the Indian want to embrace, but the earth and the sky and the horses don’t want it, so they are kept apart.’

‘Yes. I’ve read the book.’

‘It’s not about the earth and the sky and the horses, is it, Sajjad?’

‘No, Mr Burton.’

‘I don’t mind “James”, you know.’ Sajjad rolled his shoulders forward, in one of his ways of indicating he’d heard a comment without actually responding to it. ‘I’m sorry for what Elizabeth said to you. And so is she. You must know we both realised she had been wrong even before Hiroko told us what happened.’

‘No, sir, I didn’t know that. And you have not communicated with me these last months to tell me so.’

‘I thought you would have understood that from the message we had Lala Buksh deliver.’

‘I understood that the English might acknowledge their mistakes in order to maintain the illusion of their fairness and sense of justice, but they will not actually apologise for those mistakes when they are perpetrated on an Indian.’

James stepped back.

‘When did you and I become the Englishman and the Indian rather than James and Sajjad?’

‘You’re right. It’s not a question of nation. It’s one of class. You would have apologised if I’d been to Oxford.’

‘I was embarrassed, Sajjad, don’t you understand that? So was she. And dammit, man, you should have known better than to stand watching a woman while she undresses. You’re not without blame in this situation, whatever Hiroko might say. How could I have asked you back into the house with her still living there? And how could I apologise in any meaningful way if I wasn’t willing to ask you back? God dammit.’ He swiped his hands viciously at a climbing plant, and his fingers made painful contact with the brick wall behind it.

Sajjad flinched as if he’d been wounded, a gesture that escaped neither man.

‘Why are you here, if not to play chess?’ James said quietly, trying to ignore the throbbing of his fingertips.

‘My mother is dead.’

‘I’m so sorry. Sajjad, truly.’

‘It changes everything.’

‘You can’t mean Hiroko?’

‘Will you prevent me from seeing her?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then I would like to see her.’

‘I’m here.’ The words were spoken in Urdu. James looked over Sajjad’s shoulder to see Elizabeth and Hiroko standing there.

‘We’ve been here since E. M. Forster,’ Elizabeth said, walking up to James. ‘You’re really not very observant. Come on — let’s do something about your hand.’ She tugged on his sleeve, and led him inside, stopping only to give Sajjad a look of unfettered apology, which he received with a nod that said the matter was closed, though not forgotten, between them.

When the door shut behind the couple, Hiroko walked up to Sajjad, her eyes as intent upon his face as his were upon hers. She took his wrist between her thumb and finger, as he had taken hers the day she arrived in Delhi.

‘How did she die?’

‘One illness paved the way to another. The final one was pneumonia.’ His hand rested on hers, as she continued to hold his wrist. ‘The last time we met. I never meant to suggest the bomb wasn’t a terrible thing.’

‘No, of course you didn’t.’ She let go of his wrist and walked away a few steps before turning to face him again. ‘So you’re here to see me. Because your mother is dead.’

‘I’m here to see you. My mother. yes, it’s true. I wouldn’t have come if she’d been alive.’

She had imagined him coming for her, countless times these last few weeks, even though she believed it impossible. But never like this.

‘What’s the matter? Did her death disrupt your marriage plans? Have you rushed here in search of the first available woman to make your tea for you in the morning and massage your head with oil at night?’

‘I wouldn’t have to come all the way from Dilli to Mussoorie to find the first available woman.’

‘You’re impossibly vain,’ she said, turning away from him and walking towards the oak tree at the end of the garden.

‘Stay, please. Please. Stay.’

She stopped, her back still towards him, and waited for him to walk up to her.

‘I grew up believing in continuity, Hiroko.’ His voice was more sombre than she’d ever heard. ‘I grew up honouring it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. The calligraphy trade would have been continuity for you. Not a life of playing chess with an Englishman.’

‘I have uncles and cousins who work for the English. It’s what we do during the day. It’s employment. And then we come home, and take off our shirts and trousers, replace them with kurta pyjama and become men of our moholla again. That’s our true world.’

‘I see. So I’ve never seen you in your true world?’

‘No, you haven’t.’ He lifted a hand into the space between them. ‘And I’ve never seen you in yours.’

‘Mine doesn’t exist any more.’

‘Neither does mine. I don’t only mean because of my mother. This Pakistan, it’s taking my friends, my sister, it’s taking the familiarity from the streets of Dilli. Thousands are leaving, thousands more will leave. What am I holding on to? Just kite-strings attached to air at either end.’

‘And so?’

‘I have to learn how to live in a new world. With new rules. As you have had to do. No, as you are doing. Perhaps it would be less lonely for both of us to have a companion. Some constancy is comforting during change.’

The wet grass had seeped up through her shoes. She was cold and irritated and there was too much in him she didn’t understand.

‘I could never live the life your sisters-in-law accept.’