The Architect's Apprentice Part 3

She emerged, tall, lithe and reedy. Scrunching up her nose she declared, 'May Allah forgive me for saying so, but I don't understand why He would create wasps.'

She walked towards the elephant, curious to see the animal this close. Jahan glanced furtively in her direction, noticing the tiny freckles on her cheeks, the colour of marigold. Her robe of palest green appeared almost white against the sunlight, and her wavy hair peeked from beneath her scarf, which she wore loosely.

'Has my venerable father, his Majesty, seen the beast?' she asked.

Jahan swallowed, only now realizing with whom he was speaking. He bowed as low as he could. 'Your Highness Mihrimah.'

The Princess nodded nonchalantly, as if her t.i.tle were of no interest to her. Her eyes of dark amber slid back to Chota.

'Would your Excellency like to pat the elephant?'

'Would it bite?'

Jahan smiled. 'I can a.s.sure your Highness there is only kindness in Chota.'

With a wary look she approached the beast and touched its crinkled skin. In that moment Jahan had another chance to inspect her. He saw a precious necklace with seven milky-white pearls, each larger than a sparrow's egg. His gaze strayed to her hands. Such delicate hands she had, now raised to her bosom, now nervously clasped. It was this last gesture that got to him: he sensed that, beneath the surface of colours and contrasts, she carried a fretful soul, like his. Otherwise he would never have dared to say what he said next. 'Humans are frightened of animals but we are cruel, not they. A crocodile or a lion ... None of them are as wild as we are.'

'What a ridiculous thing to say! These are fierce beasts. That's why we keep them in cages. They would gobble us up.'

'Your Serene Highness, ever since I came here I have not heard of an animal attacking anyone unless we starved it to death. If we don't disturb them, they won't disturb us. But humans are not like that. Whether hungry or not, man is p.r.o.ne to evil. Where would you sleep more peacefully? Next to a stranger with a full belly or next to a well-fed lion?'

She regarded him for a moment. 'You are a strange boy. How old are you?'

'Twelve.'

'I'm older than you,' she said. 'I know better.'

Still bowing, Jahan could not help but smile. She had not said the obvious: that she was n.o.ble-born and he, a no one. She had said she was older, as though they were, or could someday become, equals. As she turned back on her heel, she demanded, 'What's your name?'

He blushed. Somehow saying his name felt awkward, almost intimate. 'The elephant's name is Chota, your Highness. Mine is Jahan. But my mother '

'What about her?'

This he had not told anyone and didn't know why he was doing so now, but he said, 'She named me Hyacinth.'

Mihrimah laughed. 'What a funny name for a boy!' Realizing he was offended, she added, more quietly, 'Why?'

'When I was born, my eyes were a strange purple. Mother said it was because she had eaten hyacinths while she was heavy with me.'

'Hyacinth eyes ...' she muttered. 'And where is your mother now?'

'No longer in this mortal world, your Highness.'

'So you are an orphan,' she said. 'I feel the same way sometimes.'

'Your n.o.ble parents are alive, may G.o.d grant them long life.'

Just then a woman's voice was heard from behind. 'I have been looking for you everywhere, Excellency. You really shouldn't have come here on your own.'

A stocky woman appeared. She had a florid complexion, a penetrating gaze and thin lips pursed in disapproval. Her jawline was strong and sharp, giving the impression of clenched teeth. Without so much as a glance at either the elephant or at the mahout, she marched by as if there were nothing in this vast garden of flowers and animals to rest her gaze upon, even for an instant save the Princess.

Mihrimah turned to Jahan with an impish delight. 'My nursemaid,' she said. 'Dada is always worried about me.'

'How can I not worry when my beloved is full of light and the world is so dark?' the woman said.

Mihrimah laughed. 'My dada doesn't like animals, unfortunately. Only one of them. She is fond of her cat, Cardamom.'

A glance was exchanged between them: subtle, elusive and impenetrable. Suddenly Mihrimah seemed troubled. 'Has My Lady Mother inquired about me?'

'Indeed, she has. I told her you were in the hamam, taking a bath, your Highness.'

'Aren't you my saviour?' said Mihrimah, smiling. 'What would I do without you?' She raised her hand, as if to wave an imaginary handkerchief. 'Farewell, Chota. Perhaps I'll come again to see you.'

Thus expressing her good wishes to the elephant, but without a word to the mahout, the Princess, with the nursemaid hard on her heels, strode down the garden path. Jahan was left behind. He stood there for a moment, forgetting where he was and what he was doing. Unasked questions in his mind, a perfume in his nostrils and a jolt in his chest he had never known before.

Jahan thought she would never come again. She did. Along with her smile she brought treats for the elephant not pears and apples but royal delicacies: figs with clotted cream and violet sherbet, marzipan topped with rose-petal jam or honeyed chestnuts, the last of which, Jahan knew, cost at least four aspers an okka. Whenever the ways of the seraglio displeased or daunted her, she came to see the white beast. She watched Chota in amazement, as if wondering how a creature this mighty could be so docile. The elephant was the Sultan of the menagerie, yet so unlike her own father.

There was no pattern to her visits. At times she wouldn't be seen for weeks on end and Jahan was left wondering what she was doing in that treasure chest of secrets that was the harem. Then she would appear almost every afternoon. Always, her dada, Hesna Khatun, waited by her side. Always, the nursemaid looked perturbed that the Princess showed such interest in an animal. Though the woman clearly disapproved of Mihrimah's affection for the elephant, she was also careful to keep it a secret.

A full year pa.s.sed. Then came a sweltering summer. Jahan was h.o.a.rding what little he had pilfered: a silver rosary (from the Chief Gardener), a silk handkerchief with golden embroidery (from a new eunuch), jars of almonds and pistachios (from the royal pantry), a golden ring (from a foreign envoy who had visited the menagerie). He knew they were only knick-knacks, not enough to satisfy Captain Gareth. He had still not been able to learn where they kept the Sultan's gems, and the truth was, as time went by and he got used to life in the menagerie, he thought less and less about it. He had not heard from Captain Gareth since that day, though the man still appeared in his dreams, a menace who jumped from out of the shadows. Why he had not shown up, Jahan could not fathom. For all he knew he might have gone on a voyage and met a wretched end.

Almost all the words that the Princess and the mahout exchanged were about Chota, who was thriving, expanding in height and weight. Hence Jahan was taken aback when one day, out of the blue, Mihrimah asked him about his life back in Hindustan and how he had ended up here. And this is the story that he told her the next day she seated under a lilac tree, he on his knees; she observing him, he not daring to glance up; she so close he could smell the scent in her hair, he unable to forget there were worlds between them.

The story the mahout told the Princess.

In the great and rich land of Hindustan there lived a poor boy named Jahan. His home was a shack, a stone's throw away from the road that the soldiers trampled en route to and from Shah Humayun's palace. He slept under the same roof as his five sisters, his mother and his stepfather, who also was his eldest uncle. Jahan was a curious boy, who loved putting together things with his hands. Mud, wood, stone, dung or twigs, all would be made use of by the boy. Once he built a large furnace in the backyard that pleased his mother immensely, because, unlike anything she had possessed before, it did not emit dark, dizzying smoke.

When Jahan was not yet six his father for he had once had a father vanished into thin air. Each time he asked his mother his whereabouts, she gave the same answer: 'He's gone by water.' On board a s.h.i.+p, destined for a city of lights and shadows, far away where they had another shah or sultan, and treasures beyond imagining.

Another boy would have seen through her fib. Not Jahan. It would take him years to make sense of the fine and flimsy lies his mother had woven around him, like wispy spider webs, there and not there. Even when his mother was married off to his uncle a man who constantly sneered at her the boy refused to accept that his father was not coming back. In helpless anger he watched his uncle sit in his father's chair, sleep in his father's bed, chew his father's betel leaves and not utter a word of grat.i.tude. Nothing his mother did satisfied the man. The fire she lit was not warm enough, the milk she touched curdled, the puris she fried tasted no better than soil, and the body she gave to him every night served no purpose since she still had not gifted him with a son.

When he wasn't grousing or swearing, his stepfather raised war elephants. He taught these peaceful animals how to charge and to kill. Jahan's sisters helped him, though never Jahan. Such was the boy's hatred of his stepfather that he steered clear of the man and his beasts. Except for one Pakeeza.

A thousand days into her pregnancy, Pakeeza had yet to give birth. Three autumns and three winters had gone by, and it was spring again. The amaltas tree down the road had blossomed gold; the slopes were swathed in wildflowers; snakes had awakened from their darkest sleep but the baby had not been born. Pakeeza had gained so much weight that she could hardly move. Every day she would mope, her eyelids as heavy as her heart.

Every morning Jahan would bring Pakeeza fresh water and a bucketful of fodder. Laying a hand on her crinkled skin, he would murmur, 'Maybe today is the big day, huh?'

Pakeeza would lift her head, a slow, reluctant gesture, yet enough of one to show she had heard him and that, despite her weariness, shared his hope. Then the sun would inch its way across the sky, paint the horizon in streaks of crimson, and another day would be over. It was the last few weeks before the wet season, the air muggy, the moisture unbearable. Secretly Jahan suspected something might have happened to the calf in the womb. It even occurred to him that Pakeeza was suffering from a bloated tummy, and that behind her swollen flesh there was nothing but emptiness. Yet, whenever he placed his ear on her huge, sagging belly, so low it almost touched the ground, he heard a heartbeat, timid but steady. The little one was there but, for reasons obscure to everyone, he was biding his time, waiting, hiding.

Meanwhile, Pakeeza had developed an appet.i.te for the strangest things. With gusto she licked muddy puddles; smacked her lips at the sight of dried clay; gobbled down cow-dung bricks. Whenever she had a chance she chomped the flakes off the barn's lime-washed walls, inciting Jahan's uncle to whip her.

Pakeeza's family dropped by every other day to see how she was faring. Leaving behind the forest, they ambled past in single file, their eyes fixed on the dusty path, their steps beating to a rhythm only they could hear. Upon reaching the place, the males fell silent while the females drew closer, calling out in their ancient tongue. Inside the yard Pakeeza p.r.i.c.ked up her ears. Occasionally she answered them. With what little strength she had, she told them not to worry for her. Mostly she stayed still whether numbed by dread or soothed by love, Jahan could not tell.

People came from far and wide to see the miracle. Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians swarmed around their shack. They brought garlands of flowers. They lit candles, burned incense and sang airs. The baby must be blessed, they said, his umbilical cord stuck in an unseen world. They tied sc.r.a.ps of cloth on the banyan tree, hoping their prayers would be heard by the skies. Before they left, the visitors made sure to touch Pakeeza, promising not to wash their hands until their wishes had been granted. The most impudent tried to pluck a hair or two from her tail; for them, Jahan kept a lookout.

Every so often a healer appeared at their gate, either out of a desire to help or sheer curiosity. One of them was Sri Zeeshan. A gaunt man with flaring eyebrows and a habit of embracing trees, rocks and boulders to feel the life within them. The year before he had lost his balance and toppled down a cliff while trying to enfold the sunset in his arms. He had remained in bed for forty days, unspeaking and unmoving, except for a nervous twitch behind his eyelids, as if in sleep he was still falling. His wife had already begun to mourn him when, on the afternoon of the forty-first day, he scrambled to his feet, wobbly but otherwise fine. Since then his mind moved back and forth, like a saw at work. Opinion was divided as to the result of the accident. Some believed it had propelled him to a higher realm no other sage had ever reached. Others said that, having lost his wits, he could no longer be entrusted with the sacred.

Either way, here he was. He put his ear on Pakeeza's belly, his eyes closed. He spoke in a low, husky voice that sounded as though it came from the bottom of that precipice he had tumbled into, saying, 'Baby's listening.'

Jahan held his breath, awed and thrilled. 'You mean, he can hear us?'

'Sure. If you shout and cuss, he'll never come out.'

Jahan flinched as he recalled the many times there had been cursing and chiding in the house. Clearly, his brute of an uncle had scared the young one out of his wits.

The healer waved a gnarled finger. 'Hear me out, son. This is no ordinary calf.'

'What do you mean?'

'This elephant is too ... sentimental. He does not want to be born. Comfort him. Tell him it'll be all right; this world is not such a bad place. He'll come out like an arrow from a bow. Love him and he'll never leave you.' With that he gave Jahan a wink, as though they now shared an important secret.

That afternoon, as Jahan watched the sky grow dark, he racked his brains. How could he persuade the baby this world was worth being born into? Rumbling, bellowing, roaring, elephants conversed all the time. Even so, it was a task beyond his powers. Not only because he didn't speak their tongue, but also because he didn't have anything to say. What did he know about life beyond these walls, beyond his eggsh.e.l.l heart?

Lightning in the distance. Jahan waited for a thunder that didn't come. It was in that lacuna, as he was expecting something to happen, that an idea rushed through his head. He didn't know much about the world, true, but he knew how it felt to be afraid of it. When he was a toddler and got scared he would hide under Mother's hair, which was so long it reached down to her knees.

Jahan ran into the house, to find Mother was.h.i.+ng her husband in a wooden tub, scrubbing his back. His uncle loathed bath times and would never agree to them were it not for the fleas. He would emerge from the water, the colour of his skin having changed, but not his character. Now he was lying in the tub, eyes closed, while the camphor oil worked its wonders. Jahan gestured at Mother, begging her to follow him into the yard. Next he whisked his sisters all of whom had inherited Mother's hair, though not quite her pretty looks out of the house. In a tone he hadn't known he was capable of, he asked them to stand beside Pakeeza. To his relief they did, holding hands, unsmiling, as if there were nothing queer in any of this. They inched closer, as he instructed them, their copious hair billowing in every direction. With their backs to the wind, and their heads bent forward, their hair caressed Pakeeza's enormous belly. Together they made a mantle that hung halfway in mid-air, like a magic carpet. Jahan could hear his uncle bellowing from inside the house. No doubt Mother heard him too. Even so, they didn't budge, not one of them. There was something beautiful in the air, and if he had had the word for it back then he might have called it a benison. In that pa.s.sing moment the boy whispered to the calf in the womb, 'See, it's not bad out here. You might as well come now.'

Afterwards his uncle beat his mother for her disobedience. When Jahan tried to interfere, he received his share of the blows. He slept in the barn that night. In the morning he woke up to an uncanny stillness. 'Mother!' he yelled. Not a sound.

He was standing beside Pakeeza, who looked the same as she did on any other day, when he saw her midriff convulse, once, then twice. Noticing that her rear was swollen, he called out to Mother again, and to his sisters, though by now he had understood there was no one in the house. Pakeeza began to trumpet as her pouch twitched and quivered, expanding horribly. Jahan had seen animals give birth before, horses and goats, but never an elephant. He reminded himself that this was her sixth calf, and she knew what to do; however, a voice inside his head, a wiser voice, warned that he should not trust nature to take its course and that he should lend a helping hand whether now or later, the voice didn't say.

A sac emerged, wet and slimy as a river stone. It fell on the ground, sending forth a gush of fluid. Astonis.h.i.+ngly fast the calf was out, bespattered with blood and a sludgy substance so pale as to be translucent. A boy! Dazed and frail, he looked worn out as if he had come a great distance. Pakeeza sniffed the baby, nudging him gently with the tip of her trunk. She chewed the gla.s.sy sac. Meanwhile, the calf clambered to his feet, blind as a bat. There were ivory wisps of hair all over his body. It was his size and his colour that perplexed Jahan. In front of him was the tiniest elephant in the empire. And he was as white as boiled rice.

Pakeeza's son was almost half the size of other newborns. Like them, his trunk being too short, he needed to use his mouth to drink his first milk; but, unlike them, his head did not even reach his mother's knees. In the next hour Jahan watched the mother elephant prod the baby, at first mildly, soon with growing impatience, pleading with him to come closer, to no avail.

Convinced that he had to do something, the boy sprinted towards the back of the barn, where they kept all kinds of oddments. In one corner stood a rough-hewn barrel, half filled with the fodder they fed the animals in winter. A rat scurried past when he moved it aside. His feet now dredged with a layer of ancient dust, he emptied the barrel and rolled the clumsy thing to where the mother and baby stood. Then he ran to the house to fetch a stewpot. Lastly, he shoved the barrel as close to Pakeeza as he could and climbed up on it.

He was taken aback by the sight of her swollen teats. Cautiously, he wrapped his thumb and forefinger around one of them and squeezed, hoping to milk her like a goat. Not a drop. He tried using more fingers and more force. Pakeeza flinched, almost knocking him down. Doing his best not to inhale, Jahan placed his lips around one of her nipples and sucked. As soon as the first drops reached his mouth he retched. It was the smell that got to him. He never knew milk could smell so foul. His second and third attempts were no more successful than the first, and before he knew it he was outside in the yard, throwing up. Elephant's milk was like nothing he had tasted before. Sweet and tart at once, thick and fatty. The nape of his neck was slick with sweat and his head felt dizzy. Covering his nose with a handkerchief helped. After that he was able to make headway. He sucked and spat the liquid into the pot, sucked and spat. When the pot was one third full, he stepped down and proudly carried his gift to the calf.

Throughout the afternoon he repeated this. The milk that he had so painfully extracted was always consumed by the baby in one happy slurp. After a dozen trips the boy awarded himself a break. While he rested, rubbing his sore jaw, he glanced at the calf, whose mouth had twisted into what he could only describe as an impish smile. Jahan smiled back, realizing they had become milk brothers.

'I shall call you Chota,'* he said. 'But you'll grow big and strong.'

The calf made a funny sound in agreement. Although there would be many who would want to rename him according to their hearts' wishes, at no stage of his life, neither then nor later, would the animal respond to any name other than the one Jahan had given him. Chota he was and Chota he remained. In three weeks he had grown tall enough to reach his mother's teats. Soon he was stomping around the yard, chasing chickens, frightening the birds, fully plunged into the discovery of the world. Loved and pampered by all the females in the herd, he frolicked. A brave elephant he was, scared of neither the thunder nor the whip. Only one thing seemed to fill him with fear. A sound that every now and then rose from the depths of the wilderness, gus.h.i.+ng through the valley, like a dark, rowdy river. The sound of a tiger.

When Jahan finished, still on his knees and having talked for the last hour at a tuft of gra.s.s, he dared neither to sit up nor to stare at her. If he had taken so much as a glance, he would have seen a smile etch on her lips, delicate as the morning mist.

'Tell me what happened next?' Mihrimah said.

Yet, before Jahan could open his mouth, the nursemaid broke in, 'It's getting late, your Highness. Your mother might return at any moment.'

Mihrimah sighed. 'Fine, dada. We can go now.'

Smoothing her long kaftan, the Princess rose to her feet and, with a swinging stride, trod down the garden path. Hesna Khatun watched her quietly for a while. Then, as soon as Mihrimah was out of earshot, she spoke, in a tone so soft and so caring that Jahan did not grasp the chiding underneath until the nursemaid, too, was gone.

'Hyacinth eyes. Milk brother to an elephant. You are a strange one, Indian. Or else a gifted liar. If that's right, if you are deceiving my good and gracious Excellency, I swear I'll find it out and make you regret it.'

The next time they came to see the elephant the nursemaid was seven steps behind and silent as a corpse. As for the Princess, Jahan thought that, in the receding light of the late afternoon, she looked more beautiful than ever before. On her finger shone a diamond, the size of a walnut and the colour of pigeon's blood. Jahan was aware that if he could only get his hands on it, he would be a rich man all his life. And yet, somehow, he also knew he could never steal from her. After feeding Chota dried prunes, she sat under the lilac tree. A faint odour, of flowers and wild herbs, wafted from her hair.

'I'd like to hear what happened afterwards.'

Jahan felt a s.h.i.+ver run down his entire body, but he managed to say, calmly, 'As you wish, your Highness.'

The story the mahout told the Princess.

About a year after Chota was born, Shah Humayun received an unusual visitor in his magnificent palace an Ottoman admiral who had lost half of his crew and all of his fleet in a terrible storm. After listening to his ordeals the Shah promised the man a new caravel so that he could return home.

'I set sail to fight the heathen,' said the Ottoman. 'But a gale brought me to this land. I now understand why. Allah wished me to witness the Shah's generosity and to convey this to my Sultan.'

Pleased to hear this, Humayun rewarded the admiral with robes and jewels. Afterwards he retired to his private chambers, and it was there, in a bathtub full of rose petals, that an idea occurred to him. His troubles were endless; his enemies aplenty, including his own flesh and blood. His late father had given him some hard advice: do not harm your brothers even though they may well deserve it. How could he fight them without harming them, Humayun wondered. And if he did not defeat them, how could he remain in power? There he was, as naked as the hour in which he was born, drained by the steam, contemplating this quandary, when a rose petal caught his eye. Swimming gracefully, it slid towards him as if guided by an invisible hand and fastened itself to his chest.

Gentle by birth, mystical by disposition, Humayun gasped. Surely this was an omen. The rose petal had shown him his weakest side: his heart. He ought not to be enfeebled by his feelings. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that the s.h.i.+pwrecked captain had been brought to him just like this petal. G.o.d was telling him to wage war on his enemies and, if necessary, to get support from the Ottomans. He left the bath, delighted and dripping.

Between the two Muslim sultanates there were sporadic exchanges merchants, emissaries, mystics, spies, artisans and pilgrims travelled to and fro. Also, gifts. The last came in all sizes: silks, jewels, carpets, spices, mother-of-pearl cabinets, musical instruments, lions, cheetahs, cobras, concubines and eunuchs. From one ruler to the other, messages were carried along with tokens of largesse, and the answer, whether affirmative or not, would arrive with reciprocal flamboyance.

Humayun, Giver of Peace and the Shadow of G.o.d upon Earth, was curious about Suleiman, Swayer of Sea and Land and the Shadow of G.o.d upon Earth. He had heard from his spies that every night before he went to sleep the Sultan wore the Seal of Solomon, the signet ring that had given his namesake command over animals, humans and djinn. Suleiman's strengths were apparent. But what were the foibles and the fears that festered under those precious kaftans, each of which he was rumoured to wear but once?

Humayun had also heard about Hurrem the queen of Suleiman's harem. Recently she had ordered a thousand pairs of turtledoves from Egypt that had been trained as carriers, tiny papers wrapped around their claws. The birds had been sent to Istanbul over seas and rivers, and when they were released, the sky above turned as black as pitch and the people ran to the mosques, fearing the Day of Judgement.

Humayun decided to impress the Ottoman Sultana with a matchless present. His offering would honour the Sultan but at the same time remind him of the lands beyond his reach and, thus, of his limits. Swathed in a cape, the Shah called for his ewer-bearer, Jauhar, in whose wisdom he trusted.

'Tell me. What would be the right gift to send to a man who has everything?'

Jauhar replied, 'Not silks or gems. Nor gold or silver. I'd say, an animal. Because animals have personalities and each is different.'

'Which animal would best convey to him the greatness of our empire?'

'An elephant, my Lord. The biggest animal on land.'

Shah Humayun gave this some thought. 'What if I'd like to imply that my kingdom, though splendid enough to have such an elephant, is in need of his help?'

'In that case, my Lord, send him a baby elephant. It'll be our way of saying that we cannot do battle just yet. We need a helping hand. But we shall grow and fight, and when we fight, we shall triumph, G.o.d willing.'

The morning Jauhar arrived with a regiment of soldiers, Jahan was feeding Chota, now weighing almost eight kantars and still the colour of ivory.

Jahan's uncle, delighted to have such a respectable guest in his courtyard, bowed and sc.r.a.ped. 'Our n.o.ble Shah's n.o.ble servant, how can I be of help?'