‘I am glad to see you too, my dear,’ he said, grinning like a boy.
‘But in God’s name how come you to be here?’
By sea, by ship - the usual way - brief explanations cut again and again by amazement - ten thousand miles - health, looks, mutual civilities - unabashed staring, smiles- how very, very brown you are! ‘Your skin is fairer than I saw it last,’ he said.
‘Stephen,’ muttered Dil again.
‘Who is your sweet companion?’ asked Diana.
‘Allow me to name Dil, my particular friend and guide.’
‘Stephen, tell the woman to take her foot from off my khatta,’ said Dil, with a stony look.
‘Oh daughter, I beg thou wilt forgive me,’ cried Diana, bending and brushing the dust off Dil’s rag. ‘Oh how sorry I am. If it is spoilt, thou shalt have a sari made of Gholkand silk, with two gold threads.’
Dil looked at the trodden place. She said, ‘It will pass,’ and added, ‘Thou dost not smell like a Frank.’
Diana smiled and wafted her handkerchief at the child, spreading the scent of attar from Oudh. ‘Pray take it, DilGudaz,’ she said. ‘Take it, melter of hearts, and dream of Sivaji.’
Dil writhed her head away, the conflict between pleasure and displeasure plain on her averted face; but pleasure won and she took the handkerchief with a supple, pretty bow, thanked the Begum Lala and smelt it voluptuously. Behind them there was the sound of bullock-?carts tearing free: the syce stood hovering to say the way was clear, the press extremely great and the horses in a muck-?sweat.
‘Stephen,’ she said, ‘I cannot stay. Come and see me. I must tell you where I live. Do you know Malabar hill?’
‘I know, I know,’ said Stephen, meaning that he knew where she lived - knew her house well; but she paid no attention in the hurry of her thoughts and went on, ‘No. You will certainly get lost.’ She turned to Dil. ‘Dost know the Jain temple beyond the Black Pagoda - the palace of Jaswant Rao and then the Satara tower - ‘ a rapid, intricate series of directions. Dil’s expression was reserved, slightly cynical, patronising, knowing; it was clear that only politeness kept her from cutting them short, from crying with Stephen, ‘But I know, I know.” . . . then through the garden.he will certainly be lost without a wise hand to guide him; so bring him tomorrow night, I pray, and thou shalt have three wishes.’
‘Certainly he needs guidance.’
The carriage door slammed, the syce heaved up the steps, from out of the rigidly-?assumed discretion the three officers stole secret glances at the glacis: the barouche melted into the sea of moving forms; for a few moments the apricot umbrellas could still be seen, and then they were gone.
Stephen felt the weight of Dil’s unwinking scrutiny:
he scratched himself in silence and listened to the now violent pounding of his heart.
‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried at last, rising and placing her thin hands together like a temple-?dancer. ‘Oh, oh, I understand it now.’ She writhed and stamped and swayed, chanting, ‘Oh Krishna, Krishnaji, oh Stephen bahadur, Sivaji, oh melter of hearts - ha, ha, ha!’ her mirth overcame her dancing and she fell to the ground. ‘Dost thou understand?’
‘Perhaps not quite as well as thou.’
‘I shall explain, make clear. She is wooing thee - she wishes to see thee by night, oh shameless, ha, ha, ha! But why, when she has three husbands? Because she must have a fourth, like the Tibetans: they have four husbands, and the Frank women are very like Tibetans- strange, strange ways. The three have not given her a child, so a fourth there must be, and she has chosen thee because thou art so unlike them. She was warned in a dream, no doubt: told where to find thee, so unlike the rest.’
‘Wholly unlike?’
‘Oh yes, yes! They are fools - it is written on their foreheads. And they are rich and thou art poor; they are young and thou art ancient; they are handsome red-?faced men, and thou - most holy men are hideous, though more or less innocent. Horns and trumpets! Hurry, come hurry: we must run down to the sea.’
Stephen walked into the silversmiths’ alley, a lane even narrower than most, with awnings spread against the fierce declining sun; the heat was filled with an incessant clicking, not unlike an insect stridulation On either side of the alley the smiths worked at filigree, nose-?rings, anklets, bracelets, stomachers, each in his open cupboard of a shop: some had braziers with pipes to direct the flame, and the smell of charcoal drifted along the ground.
He sat down to watch a boy polishing his work on a crazy wheel that splashed red liquid into the lane I am extremely unwilling that Dil should accompany me,’ he reflected, ‘and myself dressed in European clothes.’ The shadow of a Brahmin bull fell over him and the stall, making the brazier glow pink; it thrust its muzzle into his bosom, snuffled, and moved on. ‘I get so sick of lies: I have been surrounded with them and with deception in one form or another for so long. Disguise and subterfuge - a dangerous trade -the taint must come through at last. There are some, and Diana is one I believe, who have a separate truth of their own: ordinary people, Sophie and myself for example, are nothing without the ordinary truth, nothing at all. They die without it: without innocence and candour. Indeed the very great majority kill themselves long long before their time. Live as children; grow pale as adolescents; show a flash of life in love; die in their twenties and join the poor things that creep angry and restless about the earth. Dil is alive. This boy is living.’ For some time the boy, a creature with huge eyes, had been smiling at him between bracelets; they were well acquainted before Stephen said, ‘Boy wilt thou tell me the cost of those bracelets?’
‘Pandit,’ said the boy, his teeth flashing, ‘the truth is my mother and my father; I will not lie to thee. There are bracelets for every degree of wealth.’
When he found Dil she was playing a game so like the hop-?scotch of his youth that he felt the stirring of that ancient anxiety as the flat stone shuffled across the lines towards Paradise. One of her companions hopped exulting to the goal itself, her anklets clashing as she went. But it was false, cried Dil, she had not hopped fair - a blind hyaena could have seen her stagger and touch the ground: glaring about with clenched fists to call heaven and earth to witness she caught sight of Stephen and abandoned the match, calling out as she left them, that they were daughters of whores - they would be barren all their lives.
‘Shall we go now?’ she asked. ‘Art so very eager, Stephen?’ She found the notion of Stephen as a bridegroom irresistibly comic.
