The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [562]
It would have been difficult, in the circumstances, to refuse such a request – even if it had occurred to him to do so, which it did not. In fact, it suited him very well. Juli was happy in Kabul – and besides, it would give him more time to decide what he meant to do and where they would go, for if the Corps sent an Escort to Kabul, their tour of duty would not be less than a year. Which would also mean that he would be seeing a good deal of Wally, who need not be told until the year was almost up that he, Ash, had sent in his papers and would never be returning to the Guides…
Ash left Mardan for the last time as the moon rose, and Zarin accompanied him past the sentries and watched him stride away across the milky plain towards the Border hills.
They had embraced at parting and exchanged the formal sentences of farewell as they had done so often before: ‘Pa makhe da kha' – may your future be bright… ‘Amin sara' – and yours also. But both knew in their hearts that they were saying them to each other for the last time, and that this was a final farewell. They had reached the parting of the ways, and from now on their paths would lead in different directions and would not cross again, no matter how bright their separate futures might be.
Ash turned once to look back, and saw that Zarin had not moved but was still standing there, a small dark shape against the moon-washed spaces. Lifting an arm in a brief salute he turned and went on; and did not stop again until he was beyond Khan Mai. By which time Mardan had long been hidden from him by distance and the folds of the plain.
‘That leaves only Wally,’ thought Ash. ‘… my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me…’
The four pillars of his imaginary house were falling one by one. First Mahdoo and then Koda Dad; and now Zarin. Only Wally left; and even he was no longer the staunch support that he had once been, for he had grown away and acquired other interests and different values, and Ash wondered how long it would be before he too must be left behind – as Zarin had been. Not yet, at least; for they would probably be meeting in Kabul in the near future. Besides, there was no reason to fear that he would lose Wally as he had lost Zarin. And even if he did, would it matter so much, now that he had Juli?
Thinking of his wife, he saw her face as clearly as though it had actually materialized out of the moonlight before him: her grave eyes and sweet, tender mouth, her serene brow and the lovely, shadowy hollows below her cheek bones. Juli, who was his quietness and peace and refreshment: his dear delight. It seemed to him that her gaze held a faint trace of reproach, and he said aloud: ‘Is it selfish of me to want you both?’
The sound of his own voice startled him. The hot night was so still that although he had spoken very softly, the moonlit silence magnified the sound out of all proportion and served to remind him that he might not be the only traveller abroad that night. The reflection successfully changed the direction of his thoughts, for he knew that the people of this region had no love for strangers and a habit of shooting first and asking questions afterwards; and quickening his pace he strode on with his mind alert to danger rather than preoccupied with unprofitable hopes and regrets.
Shortly before dawn he found a safe cleft among the rocks, where he was able to sleep for the best part of the day. And when he dreamed it was not of Zarin or Wally, or anyone in the life he had left behind him, but of Anjuli.
He returned to Kabul by way of the Malakand Pass, and found the city and the plain simmering in an unaccustomed cauldron of heat and dust that made him think more kindly of the temperatures that he had left behind in Mardan, because although Kabul stood six thousand feet above sea-level, the rainfall was scanty and the earth was parched for lack of moisture. But the breeze that blew off the snowfields of the Hindu Kush at evening cooled the upper rooms of the Sirdar's house and made the nights pleasant. And Anjuli had been