The Impressionist (11 page)

So Pran is ushered inside a gateau, a meringue, a three-dimensional projection of a crumbling mind, a game of Chinese whispers frozen and richly rendered in expensive imported stone. Inside it is (of course) a maze, spacious corridors divided and subdivided into paranoia-inducing rat-runs which snake and curl through dark interior cavities and end in alcoves or brass-banded doors or blank walls that would surely reveal secret catches if only your fingers could find the right place. The hijras walk Pran past liveried guards dozing against old-fashioned pikes, up some stairs and along a long curving walkway lined on either side with intricate marble screens. Beyond the beautiful carved birds and flowers he catches glimpses of larger spaces, formal halls, durbar rooms and audience chambers, echoing stone voids that roll footfall sounds like snowballs into a meaningless elephantine booming. More guards and a giant theatrical door, much action with keys and clanking chains, and then Pran enters the zenana, the women’s quarters of the palace.

No immediate acreage of unclothed female flesh meets his eyes. There is a promising scent of attar of roses, and an ante chamber glazed in variegated pink tiles with an odd slick look about them. At the far end is a gated entrance, more of a slit than a doorway. A pink glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling.

From the other side of the gate comes the sound of a fountain and tinkling feminine laughter, but Pran is not allowed to proceed any further in that direction. Instead he is taken up more stairs, climbing a tower into the open air, where he is met by a cool wind and a breathtaking view of hills.

The Khwaja-sara, chief hijra of Fatehpur, sits under a canopy and stares out across the pink battlements of the palace to the dry winter fields below. A wizened figure, wrapped in a rich gold-bordered sari, he is constructing an intricate paan. Before him is an inlaid brass tray of ingredients, each one in its own round bowl. He chooses a tender leaf, brushes it with a little of this, a touch of that; some sweet coconut paste, a dash of lime. Then, sprinkling a few succulent red pieces of betel on top, he carefully folds it into a parcel and, with a flick of his fingers, tucks it into the pouch of his cheek. Pran hovers by the stairs, watching.

‘Stand closer, child. Let me look at you.’

He walks forward. The Khwaja-sara scrutinizes him intently.

‘What are you, Rukhsana?’ he asks in a lisping voice. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘A boy.’

‘Really? Are you sure? Look at what you’re wearing.’

Confused, Pran glances down at his burka-clad body. As he does so, his eye is caught by an unpleasant sight. On the tray among the little bowls of paan ingredients is a long, cruelly curved knife. Following his horrified stare, the Khwaja-sara picks it up and runs a gnarled finger along the blade.

‘You can’t make me stay,’ whispers Pran hoarsely. ‘I want to leave. I was brought here against my will.’

This seems to be a mistake. In a rustle of silk the Khwaja-sara sweeps to his feet, brandishing the curved knife. ‘Will?’ he spits, spraying red betel-juice into Pran’s face. ‘
Will?
Your will is of no consequence.’

‘Please –’

‘You don’t have the right to beg! You are
nothing,
do you understand me? Nothing!’

The hijra makes a couple of waist-level passes with the knife. For such an ancient creature, he is surprisingly deft. Pran starts to feel faint.

‘Now,’ lisps the Khwaja-sara threateningly, ‘who are you?’

‘I am Pran Nath –’ begins Pran, but is brought short by a slap to the face.

‘No!’ spits the Khwaja-sara. ‘Try again. Who are you?’

‘I –’ Another slap.

‘No! Again!’

This goes on until Pran (who has tried answering
please, stop hitting me
and even
Rukhsana)
mutters, ‘Nothing.’

‘Good. Now who am I?’

‘You are the Khwaja-sara.’

‘The impertinence!’ Another slap.

‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’

‘Good. Well done.’

Pran is confused. It is like being tutored, only in reverse. For the Khwaja-sara, less seems to be more, knowledge-wise.

‘Remember you know nothing. You
are
nothing. Now Rukhsana, how many sexes are there?’

‘Two?’

‘Fool! There are thousands! Millions!’ The Khwaja-sara is becoming quite animated, twirling around the roof like a superannuated dancing-girl. Pran, terrified, keeps his eyes on the blade, which is glinting unpleasantly in the lamplight.

‘Some people,’ says the Khwaja-sara, ‘can be so self-pitying.’

He sings, in a reedy falsetto:

‘Oh, this mortal body will not release me

It will never let me go

Threads of silk

Bind it securely to my soul’

‘Such idiocy! All it takes is a cut, one simple cut.’ He flourishes the knife. ‘This blade is a key, Rukhsana. It opens the door to an infinity of bodies, a wonderful infinity of sexes. As soon as you’re free of the thread which ties you down, then you can dance, and fly!’

Like a ragged silken bat, the Khwaja-sara flaps across the roof, performing his own multitudinous freedom for the twilight hills and fields.

‘You may think you are singular. You may think you are incapable of change. But we are all as mutable as the air! Release yourself, release your body and you can be a myriad! An army! There are no names for it, Rukhsana. Names are just the foolishness of language, which is a bigger kind of foolishness than most. Why try to stop a river? Why try to freeze a cloud?’

He halts his pirouetting and, ancient again, shuffles towards Pran, holding out the knife.

‘It really is a very good idea, you know. You should not be frightened.’

Hands involuntarily clasped over his crotch, Pran backs away until his hips hit the low battlement wall. The Khwaja-sara hobbles towards him, kohl-rimmed eyes drilling into him from the rouged, wizened face. Quivering with excitement, it makes an effort to calm itself, with a toss of long hair and a flutter of a hand becoming a herself, then coughing and straightening up into a himself, then relaxing into something else, something complicated and fleeting, a self with no prefix.

‘Sadly, we have other things to attend to before we free you of the tyranny of your sex. You are Rukhsana, which is to say that you are nothing. You have been brought here to perform a service for the state of Fatehpur, and you will do your duty without complaining. If you do, you will be rewarded.’ He flourishes the knife. ‘If not, you will die. Now, follow me, and I will show you the face of your new master.’

Pran follows the Khwaja-sara through a maze of corridors to a large hall. This is not one of the ballrooms which bubble through the body of the palace like air in a strawberry mousse, but an audience chamber so plain and muted that it might be a part of another building entirely. This diwan-i-am is built in traditional Mughlai style, the style of the founders of this little kingdom. Walls of cool white marble are pierced on one side by a row of arched windows through which a light wind is blowing. The wind tugs at the flames in the ornate brass lamps suspended from the ceiling, sending flickering shadows over the faces of the fifty or so courtiers assembled here. They wrap their shawls closer round their shoulders and pull meditatively at hookahs. Discreet servants wait in the shadows with new coals, plugs of apple-scented tobacco, slim-necked flagons of wine and silver trays of sweets.

The men are richly dressed, expensively set turban jewels and heavy necklaces glowing significantly in the yellow light. Yet none, not even the brother who sits yawning with his foreign cronies near the back of the pillared hall, can outshine the Nawab, who wears seven strands of pearls and carries on his finger a ruby the size of a quail’s egg, given to an ancestor by the Emperor Aurungzeb. Though Nawab Murad, Slave of God, Father and Mother of the People, Defender of the True Faith and Shield of the Kingdom, is still a young man, his eyes are recessed in his skull and his forehead is heavily lined. An atmosphere of melancholy hangs around his neck more heavily than the pearls, an atmosphere he has, consciously or unconsciously, spread about him in this hall like a dusty carpet. He appears insubstantial, almost ghost-like, and his sorrow lends a quality of mourning to this gathering, which seems to look back into the past with such a constant collective gaze that the participants take on the appearance of a Persian miniature painting, their faces freezing into serene immobility, their poses as formal as the floral border of carnelian and black marble which runs around the walls.

Reciting his latest ghazal, the poet Mirza Hussein senses this mood and (such are the ways of God) finds it instantly reflected in the lines he wrote for the occasion:

‘Every corner of the court is decked in shadows

Only my heart remains, burning through the night’

A murmur of approval goes through the mushaira.

‘How long, O Mirza, do you think you can you survive

abandoning all hope, forswearing all delight?’

Mirza concludes the final stanza, naming himself as the convention demands, and his audience anticipates the last word, joining in as he speaks it. The chorus of voices mouthing ‘delight’ breaks into calls of approval, and the poet receives his applause with a slight inclination of the head. It is a moment of near-perfection, and brings a fleeting smile to the Nawab’s face. He has called this mushaira, his love of poetry being one of the few good things he feels is left to him, a powerless ruler in a debased age. His courtiers seem to feel as he does. Only the line of uniformed Englishmen at the back appears unmoved. The Englishmen, on whose pink faces and starched tunics his illusion of a Mughal past shatters like a thrown mirror. The Englishmen, and Firoz, his younger brother, clicking his fingers at a servant and fiddling disaffectedly with the celluloid collar of his London-tailored shirt.

The voices calling ‘delight’ are the first thing Pran hears as the Khwaja-sara guides him through the last courtyard to the mushaira.

‘In a moment you will see the Nawab,’ the hijra whispers. ‘Whatever happens, you are to be still and silent. Do you understand?’

Pran nods. They emerge through an arch into the audience hall and stand in the shadows, beside a servant who stands very straight, balancing a tray of savouries on one hand. A drawn-looking man begins to read a poem in precise, elevated Urdu.

‘Why should you quit the chamber of my heart

Why should you flee this, your safest haven?’

‘That is the Nawab, to whom you now belong,’ whispers the Khwaja-sara.

Pran studies the melancholy eyes, the bird-like gestures of the man’s hands as he speaks. As one sad couplet follows another, the Khwaja-sara mutters approval. ‘He is a very fine poet,’ he breathes.

Pran looks at the assembly of nobles. In their finery, with their hawkish features and proud bearing, they are an impressive sight. Involuntarily, he raises a hand to his own face, to stroke an imaginary heroic moustache.

‘How is it that I strayed from my garden