Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

In the past eighteen months there had rarely been a day when she hadn’t thought of Konrad walking backwards, refusing her invitation to ‘stay’, but at some point the memory had become associated with, rather than accompanied by, overwhelming emotions. Not so many months ago she had been dancing with an American GI in Tokyo when some shimmying movement of his recalled Konrad’s departure, and she hadn’t even lost a step as she saw the dance through to its end before excusing herself to the powder room, where she wept at her own callousness before returning for another dance. No, there was little Hiroko Tanaka hadn’t learnt about the shameful resilience of the human heart. But seeing Elizabeth descend the stairs made it only yesterday that Konrad walked away from her to his death.

‘Miss Tanaka,’ Elizabeth said, extending her hand to the woman who was staring at her so disconcertingly. She intuited immediately that this was someone who had known Konrad well enough to be disturbed by his half-sister’s resemblance to him. When there was no response from Hiroko, she reached out and caught the other woman’s hand, which was hanging unthought of by her side, so for a moment they simply held hands before the unfamiliarity of Elizabeth’s touch, the coolness of it, removed the ghost of Konrad from between them and Hiroko adjusted her grip and shook the hand vigorously.

‘Ilse,’ she said. It occurred to her that she should be saying ‘Mrs Burton’ instead, but in conversations with Konrad it was always ‘Ilse’.

‘Elizabeth,’ corrected the other, with an apologetic smile that suggested she was at fault for having discarded her childhood nickname. ‘And what may I call you?’

‘Hiroko.’

‘Could we offer you a cup of tea, Miss Tanker?’ James said. ‘It’s lovely out on the verandah.’ Why couldn’t Elizabeth be so affable with the wives of his clients? ‘Lala Buksh, chai!’ he called up to the henna-haired man on the upstairs landing. Then he extended one hand in the direction of the verandah, inviting both women to precede him there.

Hiroko waited for Elizabeth’s response — she had pledged her allegiance in the household already, Sajjad thought — and only when she received a smile and nod of the head did she make her way down the hall, with Elizabeth following closely after. On the way to the verandah, she let her eyes linger on the Indian man who was standing to one side to allow the three foreigners to pass.

‘Sajjad, find some way to occupy yourself. We’ll get back to those files later.’

‘Sajjad?’ Hiroko stopped in front of the Indian.

‘Yes?’ He wanted to reach out and touch the black, raised spot on her cheekbone, to see if it was part of her or if it was a tiny beetle that had landed on her skin, tucked its wings under its body and decided never to leave. She struck him as a woman who would allow certain liberties — to beetles and to curious men — if the intentions weren’t discourteous.

She was about to say that Konrad had spoken of him but before she could Sajjad gave Hiroko a look of warning and shook his head slightly. What are the rules of this place, she wondered, as she smiled uncertainly at him and walked on past James and Elizabeth’s looks of curiosity. Had Konrad felt as lost when he first came to Nagasaki? If only she had his purple-covered books; if only there were that much of Konrad Weiss still in the world. But the tree on which he’d hung his book mobile had burnt to a blackened stump on 9 August, though Konrad’s neighbourhood was otherwise uncharred. Yoshi Watanabe had said the bomb couldn’t possibly have been responsible — perhaps someone walking past the vacant plot had been lighting a cigarette when the flash of the bomb had startled him into dropping a match or the cigarette itself over the low wall. ‘Even if that’s true, the bomb is still responsible,’ Hiroko had said.

The desire to sit down on the ground and weep was strong, but instead Hiroko stepped on to the verandah, and into another world. Everything was colour, and the twittering of birds. It was like walking into the imagination of someone who has no other form of escape. So beautiful, and yet so bounded in. She sat down on the chair James had pulled out for her, and said yes, she would love some tea.

‘What brings you to Delhi? Have you been here long?’ James crossed his legs at the knee and sat back, his elbows jutting out slightly from the arms of the chair.

Elizabeth watched him with interest as she settled herself less expansively. After eleven years of marriage she remained fascinated by James’s way of directing people’s perceptions of him. How casually he’d tossed the term ‘darling’ in her direction, minutes earlier. He did that often enough when they were in public, or hosting parties, but something about hearing it in the morning hours, with Sajjad standing near by glancing up in surprise, had made that travesty of endearment particularly striking.

‘I just arrived. I didn’t want to be in Japan any longer,’ Hiroko said.

James nodded encouragingly, as though approving the opening of a play and indicating his willingness to stay and discover how events unfolded, but Elizabeth saw that Hiroko had reached the end of her answer.

‘And you know Konrad?’ she said. Hiroko nodded. ‘He told you he had relatives in Delhi?’ As she spoke she ran her palms along the fabric of her dress, smoothing what wasn’t creased to begin with. As though she believed the flowers imprinted in the cotton had fallen into her lap from the shrubs leaning into the verandah, Hiroko thought. That was a Konrad-thought.

‘Bungle Oh! Civil Lines, Delhi,’ she said softly, speaking the memory out loud. ‘He said who could resist such an address?’

James leaned forward slightly.

‘Have you come from Nagasaki?’ She seemed far too. whole to belong in any of those photographs that he still didn’t see the point of publishing in magazines that people’s children might get their hands on. As eight-year-old Henry had. Daddy, did Uncle Konrad look like this when he died? the boy had said, pointing to something barely recognisable as human in a magazine that Elizabeth had stupidly brought into the house.

‘Tokyo. I’ve been working in Tokyo since soon after the war ended. As a translator. Someone I knew there told me about a friend of hers who was coming to India, to Bombay. We met, and I convinced him to let me travel with him. And from Bombay I took the train to Delhi.’

‘What, alone?’ James glanced over at Elizabeth. She’s making this all up, his eyes signalled.

Hiroko didn’t miss the unspoken communication — since the bomb she had started to watch the married with the keen interest of one who knows all her understanding of coupling must come from observation.

‘Yes. Why? Can’t women travel alone in India?’

Elizabeth almost laughed. So much for those demure Japanese women of all the stories she’d heard. Here was one who would squeeze the sun in her fist if she ever got the chance; yes, and tilt her head back to swallow its liquid light. At what point, Elizabeth wondered, had she started to believe there was virtue in living a constrained life? She clicked her heels against the floor in impatience at herself. Virtue really had nothing to do with it.

‘Well, there’s no law against it if that’s what you mean.’ James was oddly perturbed by this woman who he couldn’t place. Indians, Germans, the English, even Americans. he knew how to look at people and understand the contexts from which they sprang. But this Japanese woman in trousers. What on earth was she all about? ‘But there are rules, and there is common sense. I certainly wouldn’t allow Elizabeth. ’ He faltered as Hiroko glanced towards Elizabeth to see her reaction to his choice of verb.