The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [328]
Ash would have noticed this at once had he not been so taken up with his own affairs, yet now that he had done so the change both shocked and frightened him, bringing home to him as nothing else could have done the shortness of the human span and the terrifying swiftness of Time. It was as though he had come without warning upon one of those mile-stones that long after they are passed, stand out in one's memory as marking the end of a phase – or perhaps a turning point? – and something of this must have shown in his face, for when he looked away and caught Zarin's gaze there was both understanding and compassion in it.
‘It comes to all of us, Ashok,’ said Zarin quietly: ‘He is now well past his seventieth year. There are not many who live as long; and few who have been as contented with their lot. My father has been fortunate in that he has had a full life and a good one; which is surely as much as anyone can ask of God. May we two be granted the like.’
‘Ameen,’ said Ash under his breath. ‘But I – I did not realize… Has he been ill?’
‘III? This is not a sickness – unless old age be one. This is no more than the weight of years. And who is to say that he will not see many more of them? But among our people, seventy is accounted a great age.’
Ash knew that to be true. The men of the Border hills lived hard lives, and a tribesman was considered old at forty while his wife was often a grandmother before she was thirty, and Koda Dad had already exceeded the three-score-years-and-ten that had been promised to the descendants of Adam. Of late Ash had begun to think of life as far too long, and to see it in imagination as an endless road stretching away ahead of him and leading nowhere, along which he must walk alone; yet now, abruptly, he saw that it was also cruelly short, and was unreasonably shaken by this commonplace discovery. Zarin, who was still watching him and knew him well enough to follow his train of thought, said consolingly: ‘There is still myself, Ashok. And the Regiment also.’
Ash nodded without replying. Yes, there was still Zarin, and the Regiment: and when he was allowed to return to Mardan there would be Wally also, and Koda Dad's village lay only a mile or so beyond the Border and a short march away. Koda Dad, who had suddenly become so old… Studying the old Pathan's sleeping face, Ash saw the lines of character that were engraved there as clearly as the lines of time: the kindness and wisdom, the firmness, integrity and humour, written plain. A strong face; and a peaceful one. The face of a man who has experienced much and come to terms with life, accepting the bad with the good and regarding both as no more than a part of living – and of the inscrutable purpose of God.
Reviewing his own achievements by the light of Koda Dad's long and eventful life, it struck Ash with stunning force that they could be summed up as a brief list of sorry failures. He had begun by making an utter fool of himself over Belinda and ended by losing Juli. And in between he had failed George, proved himself to be an intractable and disappointing officer, and – indirectly –caused the death of Ala Yar. For had it not been for his quixotic behaviour in the matter of the carbines, Ala Yar would still be alive and probably, at that moment, gossiping comfortably with Mahdoo on the back verandah of a bungalow in Mardan.
To set against that it could be said that he had saved Jhoti's life, avenged the deaths of Hira Lal and Lalji, and succeeded in rescuing Karidkote's reputation and treasury from disaster. But that was poor compensation for the dismal tale of his previous failures; or for the fact that his brief and passionate love-affair with Juli could only add to her unhappiness in the life to which her own loyalty had doomed her – a life that he did not dare allow himself to think about.
There were few things, in these days, that he cared to look back on; and even less that he could look forward to. But among the former