My Secret History

  I said very distinctly, “Unmesh, this is my wife, Mrs. Parent.”

  “Thank you, missus,” Unmesh said and looked truly fearful as he clasped his hands in a namaste in front of his nose.

  “He knows everything,” I said.

  Unmesh’s eyes were close together and when they grew small and serious, as they did now, they seemed even closer.

  “I am know everything,” Unmesh said.

  “We want to see the Fort and the Palace this morning,” Jenny said. “This afternoon we will visit the Taj. Will you take us?”

  Unmesh began uncertainly to hiss yess, yess, and said that he would show us. Then in his telegraphic way he said, “Taj. Morning. Better.”

  “All right then, you know best.”

  “I am know everything, missus.”

  This now sounded to me like a declaration of utter ignorance.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Jenny said, and turned to Unmesh. “I have one or two things to do. I want to buy some stamps, and then listen to the Financial Report on the BBC World Service. Depending on what I hear I might have a telex to send. And then we can meet and go to the Taj Mahal. I’ve heard it is very romantic. I will be ready at nine-fifteen. Perhaps you could explain this to your driver? Thanks so much.”

  All this she said as though to an old trusted colleague. Unmesh listened with white flicking eyes, perhaps amazed that he understood it all.

  We left at the time Jenny had specified. Unmesh was anxious, not knowing whether Jenny or I were in charge—he always glanced frantically at me when Jenny spoke to him. But he started his spiel about Shah Jahan and his beloved wife and his love for gems and jewels as soon as the car drew into the parking lot. He was still at it—about Shah Jahan’s incest with his daughter, his making the Peacock Throne, his death in prison: maybe Unmesh really did know everything—still yakking, as we walked to the ticket window in the mighty archway. He kept on, reciting dates, describing stonework, while I bought our tickets.

  I said, “We’ll see you later, Unmesh.”

  “I come. No charge. I show you this and that. Hither and thither. No charge. No money.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  But Jenny said, “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

  “We don’t need him,” I said.

  “I want him to come along,” Jenny said and I knew from her tone—though no one else would have known—that she was insisting and on the verge of losing her temper if she was thwarted. “I want him to tell me about it.” She turned to Unmesh. “Come along, then. Tell me about this pool and these trees. Do you know about those?”

  “I am know everything, missus,” he said, and he gestured. “Cypresses, missus.” The sibilance made him gasp like a beach toy losing air.

  I walked ahead. I had wanted Jenny to be alone with me and to stand still for her first look at the Taj. But she was glancing between the guidebook and the Taj, comparing the description on the page with the building in the hazy sunlight; and she was listening to Unmesh tell her that Taj was a corruption of Mumtaz, the name of the beloved wife. I had not known that simple thing, and so I walked alone, and my annoyance dissipated.

  I was distracted and overwhelmed by the experience of looking up at the Taj Mahal and seeing a different structure from the one I had seen before. It was not just different in form—it was bigger, for example, its minarets were thicker and taller; it was also a different color, as though it had been made from a different sort of marble, or a different stone altogether—harder and shell-like. It was rosier, not so white, and it glowed a golden color where the sun struck it. But its shadows were blacker than before. I saw its sturdiness now and wondered where its frailty had gone. New revelations, new secrets: it was very disturbing to me. It was a hotter day than before, and a different hour, but how could the same building be so changed in six weeks? It did not look so fresh as it had. It was mellower, and with its look of perfection—so strange in this country of ruins—was a look of everlastingness. And something else—an unmistakable vitality, something alive and breathing there.

  “What do you think?” I said, because Jenny had not said anything.

  “It’s fantastic,” Jenny said behind me, and I knew she was not thinking about what she was saying. She was gabbling, because her attention was fully engaged. “I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.”

  She peered at it, her expression growing more serious with her scrutiny. She nodded and said no more for a long while, lost in reflecting on it and no longer looking at the guidebook.

  “Incredible,” she said, muttering to herself.

  “It taking twenty-two years to build, missus.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Jenny said, though she was hardly listening. She smiled at me. “It’s just what it’s cracked up to be. To tell the truth I was expecting something of a letdown. But I like this.”

  I told Jenny what Aldous Huxley had said about the Taj (“poverty of imagination … minarets among the ugliest structures ever created”), and she shrugged.

  “Rubbish,” she said. “But he was blind, you know. I mean, literally—legally. He went limping and bumping all over the place. He couldn’t see. What do you expect?”

  Unmesh said, “I am show you inside, missus. I am know everything.”

  I thought, Oh God, and traipsed after them as he went yakketing up the marble steps. His explanations were long and muddled. Jenny said, “Is that English? Are you speaking English?” and asked him to repeat himself. Each time I caught up with them and started to speak, Unmesh interrupted, eagerly pointing, as Jenny cued him.

  “Where is this ‘marble trellis-work of exquisite design’?”

  Inside, under the dome, Unmesh shushed us and told us to be very still. And then without warning he howled in a strangled doglike way: How-ooooohhh—

  When he finished he said it was a forty-second echo, and that we could time it if we wished. I left as he howled again. In the poor light Jenny raised her wristwatch to her eyes to count the seconds.

  We were walking in the gardens towards the rear of the Taj for a view of the rust-colored river when Unmesh approached, breathlessly conveying information.

  Jenny said, “That’s enough, Hamish. We’re just going for a walk.”

  “His name isn’t Hamish.”

  “Whatever. Hamish is a perfectly good Scottish name, and I think it suits him.” She was fumbling in her purse. She pulled out a pink ten-rupee note.

  “Don’t give him that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s our guide—our driver. I’m paying him for that,” I said. “He told us that he was coming into the Taj as a favor. I didn’t even want him to come. Anyway, let’s take him at his word and not tip him.”

  “I want to tip him,” Jenny said.

  Unmesh was listening, his face darkening with anxiety.

  “You heard him,” I said, and this time I turned to him. “ ‘No charge. No money.’ ”

  Unmesh twitched and smiled in eagerness for Jenny to reply.

  “I didn’t hear him say that.”

  “He said it. You said it, Unmesh, didn’t you? He won’t look at me!”

  “I don’t care what he said. If I want to tip him, I’ll tip him—”

  Unmesh’s shirt was dirty. It was the same one he had worn when I first met him, the only shirt I had ever seen him wear. It was torn at the shoulders, there were stabbings of a ballpoint pen at the pocket, the tails flapped. It had aroused my pity once; but now I wanted to hit him for wearing it and not washing it.

  “—and it’s no business of yours what I do,” Jenny was saying.

  “He said he didn’t want the fucking money!”

  “It doesn’t matter whether he asked for it or not. I know he wants it. You have no right to tell me what to do!”

  We had silenced the birds in the trees above us, a few children wandered over to listen, and still Unmesh lingered, staring hard at Jenny, his fingers at the level of her m
oney.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, becoming self-conscious as I saw the Taj Mahal glaring behind Unmesh’s wild hair.

  “Take it,” Jenny said, pushing the ten rupees into Unmesh’s eager hand and adding five more to it.

  Unmesh became courtly. The money relaxed him. He closed his eyes and touched the money to his forehead, bowing slightly as he did so.

  “You said you didn’t want any money,” I said, nagging him. But Unmesh wouldn’t look up. He was averting his gaze, his head twisted towards Jenny, who was walking away.

  “That’s you all over,” she said, tramping up the path to the riverside. “Bossy. Mean. Trying to get the better of that pathetic little man. Trying to push me around.” She turned and said, “Don’t you ever tell me who I can tip. If I want to give him fifty quid I’ll do it, and you have no right to stop me. It’s nothing to do with you. Now get away from me. You make me sick.”

  With that she pulled her hat brim down and walked on, in the strict geometry of pathways that led back to the beautiful Taj Mahal. It was becoming mottled now in the cloudy light of midmorning.

  Unmesh was lurking behind me.

  “I thought we were friends,” I said.

  He looked down and seemed to shrink in a posture of apology. Was he doing this deliberately to make me feel ashamed?

  “Oh, forget it,” I said, and when I laughed he seemed reassured.

  After the Fort and the Palace and lunch we went to the marble carving workshop. By then Jenny was calmer. She did not allude to our argument at the Taj until I mentioned it, saying that Unmesh probably got a tip here for bringing us, and wasn’t he lucky he met gullible tourists?

  “He’s not lucky at all,” Jenny said, glancing back at him. “And you were completely in the wrong. You just refuse to admit it. But I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

  We were taken through the workshop and shown the boys preparing the marble slabs, smoothing and polishing them, and the skilled men carving scrollwork into the stone or setting bits of semiprecious stones in the surface. They were making paperweights and tabletops and chessboards, in the same patterns of inlaid flowers that occurred on the walls of the Taj.

  “Shall we get one?” I said. I pointed to a slab that would serve as the top of a coffee table.

  Jenny said mockingly, “A little piece of India to take home with you. Must you?”

  “It would make a lovely table.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling,” Jenny said, in a gentler way—perhaps self-conscious because of the watching marble carvers. “It’s lovely but it’s useless. We’d just get tired of it and put it in the attic, like all those other useless treasures you’ve bought. Andy—be honest—haven’t we got enough already?”

  9.

  Jenny said, “I think we’ve absolutely done Agra—let’s look at something else,” and we went to Sikandra, five miles up the Muttra Road, to look at the mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar. It was a vast and glorious mosquelike building with a big dome, in red sandstone, and when Jenny said, “where are the boldly pierced grilles,” and laughed, Unmesh dashed ahead and pointed to the flanking walls. And he claimed there was a wonderful echo under the dome—not quite as long as that in the Taj but long nevertheless, particularly when it was a human howl. Unmesh obliged, Jenny timed it—thirty-four seconds—and she handed him ten rupees, which he touched to the red juicemark on his forehead before he closed his skinny hand over the crumpled bills.

  “I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” Jenny said, taking my arm. In a sweeter voice she added, “Let’s not quarrel. This is such a lovely place—and there’s no one else here. I know I was a little sharp with you yesterday, but don’t you see that you were totally in the wrong?”

  We passed a small white pillar. Jenny, who still held the guidebook, said that the Koh-i-nur diamond had once been set into it, before becoming part of the Peacock Throne.

  Listening to her read from the guidebook I felt very tender towards her and asked, “Do you love me?”

  She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Very much. And I love traveling with you. I want to go on doing it.”

  When she said that I had the clearest vision of Eden looking alarmed and saying When you turn that corner I’m going to cry.

  We went to Fatehpur-Sikri. Jenny in her floppy hat went with Unmesh from street to empty street identifying the buildings. I exhausted myself climbing to the top of the five-story Panch Mahal, and after that stayed in the shadows of the doorways, breathing hard and watching for snakes. I did not want to know the exact temperature—I was sure it was well over a hundred, and could have been a hundred and twenty. It was a withering parching heat. Even the crows had dry pleading caws. When the crows were gone nothing moved in the blinding sunshine and the only sound was that of locusts, a high-tech whine that pierced the heat like the point of a blade.

  Unmesh unpacked the lunch in the shade of a familiar-looking building: it was the same spot where we had had our lunch before.

  “Pignig,” Unmesh said.

  Jenny and I sat together on a stone seat. “Tell me what is in this sandwich, Hamish.”

  “Cheej,” Unmesh said.

  “Delicious,” Jenny said. “This is heaven.”

  “Maybe too hot for missus,” Unmesh said.

  “Let’s not talk about the weather,” Jenny said. “What is the name of this building?”

  “Khwabgah,” Unmesh said.

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “House of Dreams,” Unmesh said.

  “How wonderful,” Jenny said. “ ‘House of Dreams.’ ”

  “Because they sleeping inside.”

  “You see, Andy? He really does know everything.”

  Her praise fired Unmesh and he said, “And that is Panch Mahal where mister was climbing. Panch meaning five. Five levels.”

  “Punch—the stuff you drink—has five ingredients. That’s why it’s called punch,” I said.

  “You see, Hamish? My husband knows everything, too.”

  “Yes. He knowing everything,” Unmesh said, and then perhaps fearing that Jenny doubted him he pointed with his sandwich and said, “That Daftar Khana, that Rumi Sultana, that Jodh Bai’s Palace, that Jami Masjid—”

  “He is a bit of a bore,” Jenny said, when I found her alone later on. “But he’s awfully sweet.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I sent him off to find me a nice cup of tea.”

  “Tea? In this heat?”

  “Don’t be so ignorant,” she said. “Tea is just the thing. It makes you sweat, and that cools you. Ask anyone. And you’re supposed to be the great traveler!”

  She laughed as she always did when she said something dismissive—but it was a gentle laugh. She was not malicious. She was simply preserving her own identity, distancing herself, testing my ability to be challenged or defied. I secretly admired her for standing up to me, but it annoyed me when she was in the wrong or when she went too far. And I could not stand arguing in public, particularly in front of Unmesh. I felt she owed it to me, out of solidarity, if not to agree with me at least not to bully me when Unmesh was present. He had no right to see us argue. But I knew her well enough to be able to phrase her reply for her: What right did I have to win an argument, simply for the sake of appearances?

  Our petty dispute over Unmesh’s tip lay unresolved, but I felt she was paying for it in the way Unmesh tagged along after her and babbled and howled, believing that at the end of it there would be more baksheesh.

  There was no more. He did not know Jenny as I did. And as always she spelled it out.

  “I know you want another tip, Hamish. But I’ve given you quite enough already. You should be happy with what you’ve got.”

  Still he persevered, hoping to impress her, and just before we left he hurried us urgently to the south wall of the mosque, where there was an enormous gateway and a long flight of steps.

  “Gate of Victory Buland Darwaza,” Unmesh said. “Look, look.” He was gestur
ing to an inscription in Arabic script. “I am read it.” He traced the script by moving his skinny finger through the air and said, “Issa, peace be on him, saying, ‘World is bridge. Pass over bridge but do not build house on bridge. World lasts one hour only—spend it by praying.’ ”

  “Who is Issa?” Jenny said.

  “Jesus,” Unmesh said.

  “Our Jesus?”

  “Your Jesus!” he said triumphantly.

  He looked hopeful, but there was no reward.

  On our way back to Agra on the rutted road I prayed for something to go wrong with the car, as it had when I had traveled this way with Eden. The car was just as wrecked-looking and noisy, but rattled along without an engine failure or a flat.

  So at a certain point, I said, “Stop the car, Unmesh. I have to make water.”

  “What a quaint phrase,” Jenny said.

  I slipped out as Unmesh’s face—his big brown nose, his close-set eyes, his spiky hair and narrow head—rose up from the front seat.

  “Are you making water, missus?”

  Her gaze went straight through his head and she did not reply.

  I took my time by the roadside. It was late afternoon and the air was sultry and unbreathable, with the accumulated heat of the day. Dust clung to my damp arms. The fields next to the road were dried out and looked cracked and infertile. Voices carried from nearby huts—children’s laughter and the chattering of women. Where did they get the energy to raise their voices?

  A young man approached the car. He looked in at Jenny with curiosity, his mouth open, and then put his tongue out and cringed and whined.

  “He wanting money, missus,” Unmesh said.

  “What is he saying?”

  “He say he is very hungry.”

  Jenny seemed undecided. She looked at him through her sunglasses.

  I reached into our picnic basket and took out a slender cucumber and handed it to the young man. He screwed up one side of his face and muttered twice and stepped into the crumbly field.

  Jenny called him back and gave him five rupees. He groaned, thanking her, as Unmesh looked on resentfully.