Читать книгу Dirty Little Secret - Jon Stock - Страница 23

Salim Dhar moved around the bedroom, looking for something that would link the place to his mother. The air was stale, the mood one of finality rather than grief. There were no sheets on the double bed, just a pile of folded blankets at one end and some pillows without their covers. The bookcases were empty, the cupboards bare.

He limped over to the bedside table, where there was a small bronze statue of Nataraja: Shiva as lord of the dance. The figure was familiar to him, a distant memory from the days when he had been a Hindu, like his parents, who had called him Jaishanka Menon. He had converted to Islam partly to spite the man he thought was his father. The statue’s weight surprised him, and he wondered at its significance. It was the only trace of India in the room.

He picked up a leaflet from the dressing table. It was the order of service for the funeral of Stephen Marchant, the man who had turned out to be his real father. There were Christian readings, but Hindu ones too, and a passage by Kahlil Gibran, an Arab described in a footnote as a Maronite Christian influenced by Islam and Sufism.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

As he put the service sheet down, something caught his eye. A photo had slipped to one side in a silver frame on the dusty windowsill. It showed a middle-aged Western woman, standing in front of Qtab Minar. She didn’t strike Dhar as a picture of happiness: a wry, confused face squinting into the Delhi sun. But it wasn’t this photo that interested him. There was another one behind it, a corner of which was visible.

Dhar turned the frame over and removed the back. An image of his mother fell onto the table. She was wearing a turquoise sari and standing in front of the British High Commission, where she had once worked. Her smile was radiant, beaming out at him across the years and the continents. He smiled back at her and slid the photo into his pocket. She was here now, somewhere in Britain. Inshallah, one day they would be together again.