of Delhi, silent and wonderfully peaceful within its broken, giant wall; and from there, having picnicked at ease in the sun, they crossed the road to the tightly-walled enclosure of the domed tomb of Ghias-ud-Din Tuqhluq, compressed as a blockhouse yet beautifully-proportioned, red walls leaning into themselves as solidly as the Egyptian Pyramids, white dome rearing austerely just high enough to peer over the flat brown plain, sprinkled with meagre trees.
They took a taxi to Humanyun’s tomb, the resting-place of the second Mogul emperor, delicately attached to the eastern flank of Delhi in an immaculate formal garden. They had no idea that they were looking at something in its own way fully as beautiful as the Taj, which on this visit they could hardly hope to see; nevertheless, their hearts lifted strangely as they looked at the long, level, red terrace, the jut of mellow stonework above, and the poised and tranquil white dome. No floating off, balloon-wise, here, this was a tethered dream, with feet rooted in the ground. At the gate, as they left, a bearded snake-charmer, grinning ingratiatingly, coaxed out of its basket a dull, swaying brown cobra. Everything about it was pathetic, nothing was sinister, except for the single flick of its forked tongue; almost certainly it had no poison-sacs. They wondered if the music enchanted or hurt; there was no way of knowing. They paid their few new pice, and took their taxi back north to the Red Fort to lose count of time wondering among the white marble palaces and the paradisal gardens that overlook the Yamuna river. The complex waterways in the gardens were still dry at this time of year, and the fountains silent, but with a little imagination they could insert a small, lighted lamp into every niche in the lattices of stone where the water-level dropped, and see the silver curve of falling water lit from within and giving off rainbows like the scintillations from a diamond. The Moguls loved water, played with it, decorated their houses with it, built sumptuous pavilions in which to bathe in it, and took it to bed with them in little marble channels and lotus-flower fountains to sing them to sleep.
From this haunted palace in its dignity and quietness the three tourists plunged straight into the broad, teeming, overpeopled clamour of the Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi’s grand market-place, screaming with cinema posters and advertisement hoardings, shrill with gossiping citizens and hurrying shoppers. They peered into the deep, narrow, open shops to see the silks and cottons baled and draped in unimaginable quantity, the Kashmiri shawls fine as cobweb, the gold and silver jewellery and the cheap glass bangles, the nuts and seeds and spices, the unknown vegetables, the fantastic sweetmeats. Horse-drawn tongas, scooter-rickshaws, cars, bicycles, stray dogs, pedestrians, all mingled in the roadway in a complicated and hair-raising dance. The noise was deafening. So next, because according to the map they were less than a mile from it and could easily walk there, they went to Rajghat, the spot close to the river bank where Mahatma Gandhi’s body was burned after his assassination, and where now a white balustrade encloses a paved space and a flower-covered dais. And there, though there were plenty of people, there was silence.
At the end of the first day they half expected that Cousin Vasudev would telephone or send them a note, either to follow up his tentative recognition of Anjli’s identity and admit his own family responsibility for her, or to effect a careful withdrawal and leave the whole thing in abeyance, pending legal consultations. But there was no message.
‘I suppose he has got his hands full,’ Tossa said dubiously. ‘And after all, he is only a cousin, and you could hardly hold him responsible as long as we’ve got Dorette to go back to, could you?’
‘I expect,’ said Anjli cynically, ‘he’s just holding his breath and keeping his eyes shut in the hope that if he doesn’t look at us or speak to us we’ll go away.’
On the second evening there was still no message. They had spent the afternoon prowling round all the government and state shops in New Delhi, among the leathers and silks and cottons and silverware and copperware and ivory carvings, well away from the banks of the Yamuna where the rites of death are celebrated. Nobody mentioned funerals. Everybody thought privately of the little, shrunken body that had hardly swelled the bedclothes, swathed now in white cotton for the last bath and the last fire. By the time they came back to Keen’s Hotel, after a Chinese meal at Nirula’s, Purnima was ash and spirit.
And there was no message for them at the desk, and no one had telephoned.
‘Maybe he’s got a whole party of funeral guests on his hands still,’ said Tossa, ‘and hasn’t had time to think about us yet. I don’t know what happens, there may be family customs… I know there don’t seem to be any more near relatives, but there must be some distant ones around somewhere… and then all the business connections, with a family like that…’
‘We’ve got to find out,’ said Dominic. ‘I’d better ring him, if he won’t ring us.’
He made the call from their own sitting-room upstairs. A high, harassed voice answered in Hindi, and after a wait of some minutes Cousin Vasudev’s agitated English flooded Dominic’s ear with salutations, apologies and protestations, effusive with goodwill but fretful with weariness and hagridden with responsibilities.
‘It is unfilial, one cannot understand such behaviour. Everything I have had to do myself, everything. And into the bargain, with these newspapermen giving me no peace… It is a decadent time, Mr Felse, in all countries of the world duties are shirked, family ties neglected… The old order breaks down, and nothing is sacred any longer. What can we do? It is left for the dutiful to carry other people’s burdens as well as their own…’
It seemed that Dominic’s question had not merely answered itself, somewhere in the flood of words, but also been washed clean away on the tide. Nevertheless, when he could get a word in he asked it.
‘Do you mean that Anjli’s father has not come home? Not even for the funeral?’
‘He has not. Everything is left to me. One cannot understand how a son could…’
‘And he hasn’t written, either? After all, he might be abroad somewhere…’
‘I assure you, Mr Felse, certain preliminaries are necessary before Indian citizens go abroad. The authorities would know if that was the case, and of course I did, very discreetly, you understand… strictly private enquiries… My aunt did not wish it, but I felt it to be my duty… No, there has been no word from him at all. The position as far as that is concerned is quite unchanged…’
Dominic extricated himself from the current, made the best farewells he could, and hung up the receiver. They looked at one another, and for some minutes thought and were silent. Not because they had nothing to say, but because what was uppermost in two minds was not to be expressed in front of Anjli. Why, thought Dominic blankly, did it never occur to us until now to wonder whether he really did go of his own will? And whether there might not be a completely final reason why he hasn’t come back? And has that really never occurred to Cousin Vasudev, either? In all this time, and with that much money at stake?
‘He may not have seen the papers at all,’ said Tossa sturdily. ‘I know people in England who almost never look at the things.’
‘He
‘But what do we do now? We could hang on for a few days longer, certainly, maybe even a couple of weeks, but if he’s as unavailable as all that what difference will two weeks make? And in any case, that would be a gamble, because we can’t do that
