A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (29 page)

‘Hello,’ he said, smiling. ‘So, you are Amrita’s daughter?’

‘That’s right.’ The handshaking continued for a time.

‘My name is Robert Barker. Welcome.’ A particularly large vein on his temple stood out now, red–blue, like a tattoo.

‘So, Frieda?’ He pulled out a plastic chair opposite them, and sat down, nodding at Tayeb, although he did not offer him his hand. ‘You have decided to visit your mother?’

‘Yes. That’s right –’

‘And am I correct in thinking that you have had no contact with her for a long time?’

Frieda nodded, then let out a strange, small noise. A half-cough. Brave, this time, Tayeb took hold of her hand and squeezed it. He was relieved that she did not move it from his grip.

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Tayeb said, ‘are you the . . .’ he paused, ‘the leader here?’

Robert Barker looked at Tayeb with an expression of monumental boredom.

‘
Leader
– huh – no, no, there is no leader here. We are run as a more . . . egalitarian and democratic enterprise.’ He turned and faced Frieda again and Tayeb recognised a dismissal. Robert Barker spoke:

‘We would love to show you around our Mission and show you the original Victorian kitchen garden. We are trying to find your mother now. She’ll need some time to prepare herself before seeing you. Normally, we ask for advance warning, but . . .’

Robert Barker spoke quickly and obviously saw no need for polite small talk. He stood up and turned to the doll-like girl, who was near the door, standing like a guardian angel.

‘Can you give them a tour of the residential area, the garden and the farm, and I will go and talk to Amrita?’

The girl nodded and Robert Barker held the door open for them to leave the prefab.

Thin pavements made of slate tiles wound through a complex of identical prefab trailer-style rooms. They were painted bright colours and signs with names hung on the doors, Bharathi, Gayathri, Hamsini and Kadambari. Another young and beautiful woman stepped out of a doorway just in front of Tayeb. This one had long light brown hair, and an alarming nose piercing – a sharp, aggressive metal point that stuck out from her nostril like a blade.

‘Hello,’ Tayeb said. She nodded, said nothing, but stared at him directly, then abruptly turned away as if she had assessed enough. Behind the residential area was a wooded section where scrambled clumps of long-established blackberry and raspberry bushes were embedded into clusters of nettles and dock leaves. In a clearing a range of benches made from chopped trees and logs were arranged in rows creating a sort of theatre space. The girl pulled out her notebook and wrote:

This is where we have readings, discussions, music sometimes.

‘Where is everyone?’

Working mostly. We have a lot of projects on the go. Some agricultural, some educational. The friend-children are all in the school quarters. A lot of our friends are involved in scholarly work, meditation, mystical questioning. It’s hard work. We have many highly intelligent and knowledgeable friends here.

The owl was in the car and suddenly Tayeb worried for it. He thought about going to get it, but did not want to leave Frieda, and anyway, what would he do with it? He trudged behind them for another half an hour of pointing and being shown rows of cabbages and beans climbing up bamboo poles. It was obviously a stalling technique, but on they trudged. Finally, they were taken back to the original prefab room where Robert Barker was waiting for them, sitting on a plastic chair with an array of unappetising biscuits on a yellow plate in front of him.

‘Would you wait here please for your mother? She has agreed to see you.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Tayeb and Frieda were alone in the room. Tayeb had a very strong compulsion to draw. It happened to him sometimes. Draw. Or spray, or paint, or disfigure – basically, to leave his mark – and this place made him irreverent. He took his fountain pen and his small notebook out of his bag and began to draw what he saw immediately in front of him. A line of tins on the windowsill all containing pencils. Beyond them, trees. The motion of making soft marks and lines calmed him. He wanted to scratch his wrists and his back, but he didn’t. He would not.

Difficulties to Overcome:
No matter what happens, keep it going, the faster the better, until a taste is acquired for the pastime; until the going-forward-forever idea seems to have taken possession of you.

29.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

August 12th

Where to start?

With the pink splinters of dawn in the sky as I pushed my bicycle through the Pavilion House gates for the final time? No. Before that, even: I was exhausted after a night of considering what to do with Lizzie. My first thought was to bring her into the sun and let the desert eat her, the insects and the heat. I thought it would be quickest, preferable to festering inside that room. But as I began to move her I remembered the monastery we had visited on the journey here, on the outskirts of Osh’s city walls, where the robed monks fed vultures because dealing with human carrion was part of their duties. The thought of beaks ripping Lizzie was –

Well. In the end I covered her with scarves, and sprinkled jasmine and rose petals from the garden on to her hair. For want of any suitable ritual, I dabbed water on her forehead and kissed her. Lost gosling.

Then, movement became my whole intention. I made sure my precious, stolen baby was well fed with Allenbury mix and packed her into a cot, fashioned for her in the basket. I have tied sticks on to the basket and a scarf, devising a method of keeping her shaded from the sun. Precariously balanced and tied behind the seat of the bicycle was the crib-trunk stuffed with the following: the remains of the dried Allenbury food, the Missionary Maps and the Survey Maps; Lizzie’s Leica and several of her films with the prints folded into Millicent’s Bible; this journal and my books, they have travelled such a distance with me; Mrs Ward’s bicycling guide, Burton, Shaw and the pamphlet of Mr Greeves’ translated folk stories. There was just room for some clothes and blankets for Ai-Lien. Once these items were strapped into the trunk, I attached, using the rope that used to tether Rebekah, the mimeograph machine. It was heavy, but compacted well into its portable box and could be useful to sell, or use as a bribe.

The bicycle was too heavy to ride, so I pushed, feeling every bump along the ancient river bed that constituted a track and each treacherous turn of the wheel increasing the distance from Lizzie. Ai-Lien seemed content enough on her back looking up at the sky as the light grew pinker and then more yellow. I pushed the bike through the arboreal area where young willows had been grafted on to poplars and it seemed as though my senses were heightened. I have walked this way many times now, but sounds came upon my ears as if in a rush. For the first time I noticed clumps of wild, scraggly lavender and bushes of sage growing at the edges of the track.

I hoped to arrive at the Old Town Citadel before the morning sun was up and blazing in its full fury. The rhythm of the journey took possession of my bones and, to my surprise, rather than Lizzie, I was thinking of Millicent. I should hate her, by rights; one could say she killed my sister, but the powerful sun dissipated hatred. All I could feel was the thud of my feet stepping forward and the turning of the bicycle wheels.

At Kashgar city gates the guards were the worst sort, young and foolish. They looked insolently at me as they checked my papers, even though I could tell they could not read. They looked at Ai-Lien. They smoked several cigarettes, stared again at Ai-Lien, at me and at the bicycle and whispered and smoked more cigarettes. My hair was wrapped in a scarf as best as I could but they continued to leer closely towards my face. I tapped a rhythm on my wrist to keep myself calm until eventually, they let me through. Inside the city wall I asked a benevolent-looking elderly man who had been watching the whole scene if he would take me to the knife souq. It took several efforts of miming to convey my request before he understood: knives.

At first I assumed that the priest was out as his room was quiet, but I could smell something recently cooked in oil, and then I heard the cooing and bickering of his restless pigeons. I had no choice but to gather up Ai-Lien and leave my bicycle with all of my possessions in the dubious, awkward-shaped entrance to his house, an entrance that seemed to stand on nothing, the ancient wood beams of its construction looking like a child’s game of balance-the-sticks.

I held Ai-Lien against me and we made our way up to his roof. He was at the cages, bent over, feeding the pigeons and at first he did not hear me or realise that I was there, despite me calling him.

‘Father, I need your help,’ I said, walking towards him. The sun was blinding. I held my scarf over Ai-Lien and squinted at him. He turned around then and did not seem surprised to see me.

‘Come out of the sun,’ he said. A dove balanced on his arm and his thin face was very red in the brutal heat, his clerical hat filthy and tilted to one side.

‘Do you have any news on Millicent, Father?’ The priest stroked the neck of the silver-grey dove, kissed its head, then leaned down and put it into one of the cages. He came towards me then.

‘They are holding her at the Magistrates’ prison,’ he said, patting my elbow and nudged me back in the direction of the entrance. ‘It is not safe for you here, mi angeli.’

Inside, I attended to Ai-Lien, feeding her and changing her as he poured me some water. Once Ai-Lien was settled I sat back and was about to tell him about Lizzie when I noticed that on the floor underneath the window, laid out in complex patterns, were tiny scraps of paper. They were arranged in lines, layered across and around each other. As I looked closer I saw that each piece was cut into a star or hexagon shape.

‘What is that, Father?’

‘Illumination. I have taken the words from the Bible and placed them in the geographical shapes of Islamic Illumination.’

I bent down. An Italian version of the Bible had been cut into thousands and thousands of pieces, some simply words, others whole sections.

‘What do you intend to do with them?’

He looked up at me and took a packet of matches from his pocket and lit the match, then picked up one of the scraps of paper.

‘Pouff,’ he said, ‘gone.’

The flame glowed, then he blew it. I watched, mesmerised, as he set fire to scrap after scrap of paper, letting the paper-ash fall from his window, a moment of light, like a firefly. In a sense it was beautiful, the sudden flare and the paper-flakes falling, but the futility of it – him – and of Millicent’s Mission, and us here, it was unthinkable.

‘They are going to kill her, aren’t they?’

Father Don Carlo began to sing softly. Listening to the pipes dangling from the tails of pigeons, dreaming his Islamic spheres, I wondered what exactly it was that the priest was doing here in Kashgar. I repeated myself, ‘Aren’t they?’

He did not answer but continued to light his flames and I had a strong feeling that he had thoroughly prepared for our meeting. Goodness knows how long the scraps had been on the floor so that he could stage this vision. There was a good chance he had even rehearsed it all, the pause before the strike of the match, the dangle of the flame in the air, the puff-puffs. Along with his pigeons, I saw, it was a cultivation of sorts – a theatrical element – his shabby dress and the felt black hat were all part of his costume. He was less abstract, more fully articulated than I had previously assumed.

‘Father,’ I said, ‘is there anything we can do for Millicent? Do you know what will become of her? You have good contacts, you could help.’

‘I asked to see her yesterday, but I was refused.’

‘Whom did you seek permission from?’ He looked away, and I did not believe him.

‘Father, you have spent much time with Millicent, helping her with the translations, you must see that some of the . . .’ I paused.

When he had no more matches, he turned the box upside down and looked inside as if surprised that within there was not an extended supply reaching as far as heaven.

‘Responsibility lies with you,’ I finished.

He turned and looked at me. His bearded face was craggy, but his hands were steady as he took a drink of wine from his dirty cup. In the dull light of his shaded room, and the plum-flesh heat that was upon us, my various impressions of him flickered each second so that at once he was drawn in and up, next peevish and frustrated, then out again, like a pair of bellows expanded and living. Then again came withdrawal and a look of suspicion.

‘Responsibility for what?’

‘For Millicent, them taking her. What will happen?’

The sigh he emitted was a bitter one, and I could not make it out. He looked despondently at the patterned paper and the ripped-up books. His glance at me was clear, it was one of superiority; he was contemptuous of me, of my existence perhaps, or of my idiocy. This was his kingdom, I now saw, and we were less welcome than we’d presumed.

I busied myself with Ai-Lien and rocking her to sleep, wondering as I did what to do. Millicent, without her eye-glasses, was encased somewhere at the whim of the General. If I went to find her I would presumably be immediately arrested, too. They would take Ai-Lien away. Father Don Carlo clearly could not be relied on to help. Indeed, on the contrary, I had thought him Millicent’s ally, but now, I don’t know. There was Mr Steyning’s telegram insisting that I leave, and the birds, tapping at Lizzie’s bones.