And the World Changed (36 page)

One evening, when Janoo returned from a trip to the temple where she prayed to the gods for protection, she recounted a story she'd heard about a crazy Englishman. More often than not, Dina Lal tuned out her recitations and left it to one of their now grown sons to do the listening. Not this time. Everyone in Lahore knew the man, if only by his house, which sat on a slight hill close to the important intersection of Lawrence and Queen's Roads. Dina Lal immediately pictured the tall, wrought-iron gates at the bottom of the property, the uniformed men who stood guard, and the troupe of
malis
who walked the lawns in the evening, sprinkling water on the grass from the bursting
mashaks
on their shoulders. Goddamn English, was Dina Lal's thought whenever he happened to pass the manicured grounds on his way back home, in time to see the
malis
traveling predestined routes on their nighttime duties. What was it about the island left behind that made this strange breed of Englishman insist on green grass, while all around the parched ground made nothing but dust?

The Englishman was John Smithson, Chief of North West Railways. Dina Lal had made his acquaintance some years earlier. The two had met at one of Dina Lal's famous Lahori parties where champagne flowed as easily as women. Janoo hadn't been able to bear her husband's excesses and, often, she'd retire to her upstairs bedroom, a wool cap pulled over her ears, while the party roared on below. Dina Lal realized that Janoo must have done exactly that the night he met Smithson, otherwise she would have put a face and a name to the
Angrez
she was now describing.

“He's lily white,” she was saying, “Yellow hair. The donkey who makes an offer on his place will be cursed. Nothing good can come of anything they leave behind.”

Shortly before Dina Lal's party, Dina Lal recalled, Smithson
had returned from Murree, the famous hill station from which naked Himalayan peaks could be glimpsed on a clear day. Dina Lal loved Murree, the snow scattered on the distant mountains, the roads built on the edges of cliffs and the bazaar that wound back and forth with the sway of the hills. Smithson slapped Dina Lal on the shoulder when the two men discovered that Dina Lal's favorite place to stay was a short walk from Smithson's summer retreat. A few weeks later he received Smithson in his office, when the land in the vicinity of his ancestral village was needed for the possible extension of a railway line. When Dina Lal accepted payment in exchange for the land, he'd had in mind that he would invest the money for his sons. Much to his dismay, his sons did not turn out to be serious students. They played far more than they studied, so he had put the proceeds from the Railways sale in a bank to wait for a day when the two boys might calm down long enough to find their way in life. With that day yet to come, Dina Lal still had a big pot of money in the bank.

“What's he asking for it?” Dina Lal said suddenly, interrupting Janoo. The amount that Janoo mentioned was identical to the sum set aside in the bank. Although Dina Lal was not a religious man, the coincidence had him thinking that the gods were at work. Much later he thought the gods, whether it was one grand one or limitless smaller ones, were responsible for his next words.

“Let's buy it,” he declared. When Janoo stopped speaking in midsentence and her mouth opened so wide that he could see the sinking gap where her largest molar had been pulled out, he added, “For you. A gift for you,” as if this clarification would somehow help mitigate his wife's astonishment.

Dina Lal's decision not to leave for India had Janoo questioning her husband's sanity. But when he spoke of buying a big yellow house far too grand for its own good, owned by an Englishman in a city being ravished, she thought him completely mad. For her own peace of mind she resolved to think of him
as yet another victim—albeit a different kind—of the Partition that was breaking her land and heart into two.

“No, thank you. Nothing good can come of anything they leave behind,” she said, repeating her earlier words a little less gruffly. “Don't say that,” Dina Lal added in irritation. “Good riddance to them. Besides, they're leaving us behind. You think nothing good can come of that? Why, we'll be free!”

But Janoo wasn't listening. She'd turned to leave the living room of the spacious home that had been theirs for twenty years. A few months earlier she wouldn't have heeded her husband's words. But each day news from the temples rattled her further. They'd entered a new age, the times were different, unlike any other, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was the same. Including the man standing behind her, going on about the wisdom of his proposition. She needed to find her sons. Even if they pulled away from her when she tried to touch them, she would know there was something she had made that was still true.

A few days later, based on Janoo's information, Dina Lal called on John Smithson. Unknown to him, John Smithson had already compiled a list of prospective owners of 5, Queen's Road, and respectable man that Dina Lal was, he was on the list. Before Dina Lal could bring it up on his own, Smithson revealed his hopes.

“My house, 5, Queen's Road,” Smithson started, “I'd like to sell it.”

“I see,” Dina Lal replied, caught only slightly off guard and feigning ignorance. “The Railways are selling it?”

“Right,” Smithson responded. “But we're looking for someone very special indeed to take the place. Someone, you understand, who would know enough to value what they'd got.”

Smithson paused, then, as Dina Lal, schooled in showing the kind of modesty the English appreciated, answered, “Certainly, certainly. Such a lovely house you have.”

“I wonder,” Smithson asked, “whether I could interest you in my house?”

“I have one,” Dina Lal replied, the bargaining side of his landlord character surfacing through no fault of his own. Then he clarified himself, remembering all his properties. “Plenty of them, I mean.”

“It's a good price,” Smithson countered.

“Real estate . . . it's in quite a slump these days,” Dina Lal replied consolingly.

“The price is very, very fair.” After revealing the exact amount (“nonnegotiable, you understand,” Smithson had added), he went on to list all the items inside the house that would be included. The billiards table, the dining table that sat twenty-four guests with plenty of leg room, the Railway crockery, sofa sets and beds, chandeliers bought in the most prestigious London stores, the verandah furniture. “Bloody hell,” Smithson finally said, sweeping his arms wide. “You'd have everything left behind.”

Strangely, because Dina Lal knew nothing about gardening and had never cared to learn, it wasn't until Smithson arrived at a description of his garden that Dina Lal leveled his undivided attention to the details being described. The longer he listened, the more fantastic and alarming Smithson's account became. Unless he'd gone to see it for himself the next day, he might have thought the brandy was at work in Smithson's rendering. On and on, Smithson went. Much of the garden was imported. The bulbs, for example, the plant food, and the original grass seed from Bengal bred to withstand the heat of the tropics. Smithson had each variety of bougainvillea, hibiscus, sage, periwinkle, lilies, and other plants of which Dina Lal had never heard, at the tip of his tongue. But he was fascinated not only by the account, which might have been drawn from the fantastic fairy tales his wife once narrated to their young sons, but also with what appeared to be desperation. It had majesty and grandeur at its command, but it was desperation all the same. Dina Lal had an inkling that Smithson feared returning to his faraway country. He could think of no other explanation for a grown man to be entirely wedded to details that couldn't reasonably be
expected to survive his departure. Against his better instincts, ones that had recently taken to blaming each and every white man he saw for what was fast becoming the horror of Partition, Dina Lal felt sorry for Smithson.

“Johnny, Johnny,” he said, confident that their early afternoon brandy would forgive his leap into familiarity. Dina Lal studied Smithson's eyes, a strained blue, before speaking. If only he'd been teasing Janoo with the prospect of the house, he cast away the joke with a deep sigh. “Let's settle it, then,” he said firmly to Smithson. The next afternoon, coming up the winding driveway for the first time, Dina Lal thought it was obvious that 5, Queen's Road belonged to the British. The grandeur of the house, the colonial architecture and the stream of servants made this clear. Halfway up the drive, Dina Lal received further confirmation. In Lahore, city of infinite smells, it was the absence of any smell at all that made the house unmistakably British. Bloody bastards, he thought, how did they do it?

Inside, Smithson gave Dina Lal a tour, hardly pausing for breath. He pointed out the woodwork on the verandah, the elaborate fireplace mantles, the room with only a billiards table in it, the doorways framed with arches. Dina Lal was shown bathrooms large enough to be bedrooms, with porcelain sinks deep enough for a child's bath. The oversized living and dining rooms could be divided by intricately crafted French doors. Smithson informed him that before construction on the house had even been completed, the locks on the doors and the decorative fixtures had arrived from England. Dina Lal pretended to listen attentively. Strangely, Smithson reminded him of a new father presenting his child to someone else, drawing attention to the round kneecaps, a neck buried in soft folds of skin, things Dina Lal might have missed about his own children had Janoo not tirelessly pointed them out to him.

“You're not married?” Dina Lal asked, interrupting. Smithson shook his head and when he returned to the description of the house, his enthusiasm wasn't quite the same. In a duller
tone Smithson further clarified the offer. Within earshot of his servants he offered Dina Lal not just the house and most of its contents, but the domestic help, including the man who was sweeping the verandah nearby as they spoke. His name was Yunis and he was a smart man, very loyal. When they finally spoke of the price, Dina Lal knew it was more than reasonable but he couldn't help trying his hand at negotiating. Dina Lal was met with unexpected stubbornness.

“Not negotiable,” Smithson repeated.

“This is India! Why, everything is negotiable here!” Dina Lal responded.

In the end, Dina Lal was insulted because Smithson refused to budge by even one rupee from his price, if only as a measure of good faith. He didn't recall Smithson being as rigid in other business dealings the two had had. He was exasperated enough to almost point this out to Smithson, but last minute apprehensions of losing the deal curbed his tongue. Eventually, he agreed to Smithson's strange figure.

Smithson, however, was not satisfied.

While Dina Lal listened in disbelief, Smithson outlined his conditions for the sale. Dina Lal could only own 5, Queen's Road if he promised to retain the crew of
malis
Smithson had hired and trained, and who would continue to care for the garden according to the schedule Smithson had devised. For example, the rose bushes would be pruned early in October so that they would bloom one more time in December. The miniature waterways that irrigated the garden were to be redug after the annual monsoon season, but not too soon after the rains. The last thing Dina Lal heard before he stopped listening was that Smithson was planning to move a model of the railway route into 5, Queen's Road, where it was to become a permanent fixture.

Excessive as this and the numerous other conditions were, Dina Lal vigorously nodded his head.

“Huh, huh, huh, huh,
jee
,” he said, agreeing to all of Smithson's conditions, impatient to expedite the sale.

Finally, the two men shook each other's cool, damp hands to finalize the deal. Soon! Dina Lal thought as he descended the long driveway where green grass was groomed to grow between bricks laid in a careful zigzagging pattern.
Soon you will be far, far away, Johnny, in your own country—nothing but an island!—and I will live in your house any damn way I please.

The first time Dina Lal walked into 5, Queen's Road after it became his, Smithson's ship was sailing the Indian Ocean. If Lahore had been seething before then, it was exploding now. Days earlier, the first trainloads of massacred bodies had rumbled down the intricate tracks of Smithson's railway system from one side of the border to the other and back again. As far as Dina Lal was concerned, there was only one way to explain it. Madness had descended when the line of Partition, inexact and incomplete, was penciled in on the Englishmen's maps. Any hope of it lifting had all but faded.

Standing in full view of the spectacular garden Smithson had left behind, framed by purple bougainvilleas climbing their own way into the astonishingly cloudless sky, Dina Lal's wife tugged at her husband's shirt. Only barely out of earshot of their two sons, almost grown men already, she spoke.

“But we don't need this!” she pleaded, as if she could still change her husband's mind, despite the deed already signed and transferred to her husband. “Where we live—it's fine. Please, my love, please.”

Dina Lal loosened himself from her grasp and paid her no mind.

Upon entering the house, Dina Lal was annoyed to see that Smithson had done as he'd promised and placed his railway model on a table in the front parlor. He recalled what Smithson had said about the delicacy of the model, but Dina Lal didn't stop his servants from pushing it to one side and piling boxes on it, as if the slopes and ridges of the topographical model comprised a flat surface. Late that night, as he walked by the table on his way to bolting the front door, Dina Lal noticed
an envelope taped to the corner of the table. In the dim yellow light he recognized his name on the crisp stationery. Squinting, Dina Lal slit the envelope with his thumbnail and began to read Smithson's first letter to him.