Hussein. Patrick O’Brian

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      Sashiya hopped from one mound to another. ‘It is too hot for a veil,’ she said, taking off her chudder. Most of the others took theirs off, for they had no idea that they were watched.

      Sashiya sat on the top of a little green mound, hugging her knees. Hussein felt a shock go through him, as if he had swallowed a large piece of ice.

      His mouth opened and he protruded his head from the bush. One of the women saw him and in a moment they were all gone.

      Hussein turned to find Kadir Baksh regarding him coldly. ‘I wish I had never told you about her,’ said Kadir Baksh.

      They went home without more words, and parted in silence, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. Next week they each went separately to watch Sashiya, but she did not come. They met on the way back and quarrelled, each being in a bad temper. The house of the chief of the mahouts was in Haiderabad: he lived with his brother, a merchant in the town, who had built a large house with a garden on the roof.

      The women of the anderun used to spend most of the day up there during the hot weather, so that Hussein, coming to see Ibrahim, the chief of the mahouts, about a matter to do with the elephants, saw Sashiya leaning over the edge. She was gone in a moment, but he had recognised her.

      The same evening he spoke with an ancient woman who sold herbs nearby. She said that she had often been into the house to see the womenfolk. She told him about the garden on the roof, but she could not remember whether there was another roof near to it or not, until Hussein gave her a rupee, and then she recalled a tree that was growing in the courtyard of a neighbouring house: this tree, she said, hung over the parapet of the roof garden. Furthermore, she said that she could get messages into the house, as her sister was one of the servants; so Hussein sent several cardamom seeds and certain flowers, which being interpreted showed that he would be on the roof garden an hour after sunset.

      He spent the rest of the day beautifying himself, and then he went into the city.

      The courtyard where there grew the convenient tree was surrounded by a low wall. There had formerly been stables leaning against the wall, but these had fallen into disuse: indeed the whole place was practically deserted, as it had been bought up as a speculation by a merchant who had been unable to let it, since it was commonly reputed to be the habitation of a peculiarly malignant ghost.

      Hussein, wrapped in a sombre cloak, got over the wall and climbed into the lower branches of the tree. The night was pitch dark and there was no moon, so he went up the tree slowly.

      Just as he was hauling himself up on to the branch that overhung the roof, he bumped into a large soft body crowding against the trunk. It was Kadir Baksh on the same errand. ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.

      Hussein was rather at a loss to reply to this, so he grappled with Kadir Baksh, meaning to throw him off the tree. They creaked to and fro on the swaying branch, cursing each other in fierce whispers.

      Sashiya watched them interestedly from the parapet. She had often seen her lovers fighting in the courtyard below, but never before in the tree. Hussein wrenched Kadir Baksh loose from the trunk, and pushed him over, but the other seized Hussein’s leg as he fell. They hit the ground together with a muffled thump; they rolled over twice; Hussein came out on top and he seized Kadir Baksh by the throat.

      ‘Go away,’ he whispered, ‘or I will kill you.’

      ‘How can I go away when you hold me by the throat?’

      ‘Swear by the Prophet that you will go if I release you.’ Kadir Baksh swore in a choked voice. Then he got up, feeling his neck tenderly, and disappeared over the wall. Hussein scaled the tree again: he found Sashiya sitting on the parapet.

      ‘Well?’ she said.

      ‘I have come,’ replied Hussein.

      ‘So I see.’

      Hussein could hardly make any reply to this, so he came creeping along the branch, and he would have dropped on to the roof, but she said:

      ‘You had better stay where you are in case anyone should come, and then you could duck under the parapet.’

      Hussein felt quite nonplussed: he had expected something entirely different. He hardly knew just what he had anticipated, but he felt that this was unconventional and not at all the right thing.

      ‘I have composed a song,’ he said, ‘about your eyebrows.’

      ‘Well, you can’t sing it now,’ replied Sashiya, ‘or you will wake everybody up. But what is there that is so remarkable about my eyebrows that you should make a song?’

      ‘They are like thin black bows bent in perfect symmetry above pools of unfathomable depth,’ said Hussein, quoting from his song, which he had taken from the works of Hafiz.

      ‘Aha?’ she said. Hussein felt that this was more like the real thing, and he went on.

      After the third verse he said, ‘Even the finest poetry cannot be recited with any effect in a tree, you know, let alone such poor doggerel as I can turn out.’

      ‘Well, if you come here you must promise not to make the least sound, or I don’t know what will happen to me if that cat Fatima comes up …’

      ‘On my head and heart,’ said Hussein, pulling himself on to the parapet.

      ‘You may go on with your poem,’ said Sashiya hastily.

      When he had finished, she said, ‘What a pity I have read Hafiz too!’

      Hussein was very much taken aback, but he did not show it. ‘How singular!’ he said. ‘So you can really appreciate him. Do you know “The Gazelle of Quarasmia”?’

      ‘By heart: and the “Rose of Frangistan”.’

      ‘Bismillah! But you are fortunate. I have never been able to get the “Rose”.’

      They talked for a long while, until the moon came up, and then Sashiya had to go.

      ‘When may I come again?’ asked Hussein.

      ‘Next week, perhaps.’

      ‘Oh, before then, please. To-morrow at the same hour?’

      ‘Well … it will be difficult: you will wait in the tree if I am late?’

      ‘All night, if need be.’

      She found him quite stiff with waiting in the tree the next night, but she rewarded him with the ‘Rose of Frangistan’. They talked only of themselves that night: strangely enough they found it extraordinarily interesting.

      In the morning Jehangir sniffed at Hussein and gave a little discontented rumble deep in his throat. As he lifted him up on his back the elephant gave him a little squeeze and shook him.

      ‘Jealous, old fat pig?’ said Hussein, pulling Jehangir’s ears, and the elephant muttered again.

      The next night he came to see Sashiya, and the next and the next: each time he liked her more than the last time.

      Jehangir СКАЧАТЬ