Part Four — The Trial · Adam's Robe Book 3
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Udvada, Gujarat, India — Day 33
Ani counted, because counting was how she stayed upright.
Eleven witnesses. Twelve, with Framroze. Two principals. Three lamps. One cabinet, one table, two lights. The shutter had five boards, and through the gaps between the second and third, a thin hard line of daylight lay across the matting and reached, at this hour, almost to the edge of the table. She had measured it twice. It was a quarter past eleven.
She had counted the pulse in her own wrist and found it too fast, and counted again until it was not.
"I would like it noted," Vartan murmured beside her, "that I have never sworn an oath on an empty stomach. I feel that it may be a defect in my character."
"There's rice at the gate."
"I am aware of the rice. I have been thinking about the rice for forty minutes." He did not turn his head. He was looking at the table, at the two lights, and his voice had the thin brightness that he used when he was frightened. "Ani. The Colonel's holding it like a baby."
"I know."
"I'd like to say a light remark."
"Please don't."
"No," said Vartan. "I won't." He put his hand over hers on the cushion and pressed it once, and took it away again. It was the nearest thing to comfort that two Manukians could afford in front of company, and she was grateful for it.
Framroze had asked for quiet, and got it. The old man stood in the middle of the floor, between the cabinet and the table, in the pale shining of the two coverings, and waited until the last cough had died. He seemed to have grown, in the last half hour. It was not a matter of height. It was the way the light fell, so that the white of his coat and his beard drew it toward him and gave it back.
"I shall tell you what we are about to do," he said, "because you are entitled to know it before you do it, and because I think it is a poor thing to ask a person to swear an oath she has not understood."
It was brief. Ani listened as she listened to an audit, for the clause under the clause.
The witnesses would form a ring. They would stand round the table, with the two principals at its center, and join hands, and the ring would close. Framroze would stand in it as the twelfth. No one would leave the ring while it stood. No one would speak in it, save to answer. When the ring had closed he would say the words, once, and each of them in turn would say them back.
"I shall give you the sense of it first," Framroze said. "The words are old, and some of them are older than the language, and I do not wish you to say what you do not follow. There are four promises."
He held up one finger.
"That you will witness. That you will stay in this room and attend to what is in it, wholly, until the matter is ended, and not be elsewhere in your mind or in your pocket." The old man's eyes were mild. "I shall return to that.
"That you will remember. That whatever you see, you will not forget it, and you will not allow another to tell you that you did not see it.
"That you will speak truly of it, if you are asked, by anyone who has a right to ask. I do not say that you will speak of it unasked. I do not require that you carry it in your mouth to the street. I say only that if a magistrate, or a friend, or a child should put the question, you will not lie."
He lowered the hand.
"And that you will lift no hand against either of these two, nor against what they wear, nor against the house, while they are in the light of it. That is all. It is not an oath of silence. Dr. Sarkisian will tell you why. I would have you hear it from her, since she is the one who taught it to us."
Ani looked across the room. Leah sat straight on her cushion, with both hands pressed flat on her knees. She had gone the color of paper.
"It's not an oath of silence because silence isn't the safeguard," she said. Her voice was low and rough and carried well. "Witnessing is. The reason this has been safe all these centuries isn't that nobody knew. It's that those who knew had to stand in the same room, and tell the truth afterwards, to whoever asked. That's the whole of it. A secret can be broken. A witness has to be got round."
"A witness has to be got round," Framroze repeated, as one tests a coin, and smiled. "Delnaz will want that in a margin."
He turned, slowly, and looked at the room.
"Then I would ask you all to stand."
They stood. The cushions sighed. Twelve people got up in a small shuttered room in the lamplight, with the line of daylight lying across their feet. Ani found herself between Vartan and Karam in a rough, awkward half circle round a table, not sure of the right way to hold her hands.
"Karam," said Framroze.
Karam had not moved. He stood by the door, in his dark coat, with the colonel's pale jacket held against his chest in both arms. He looked down at it. He looked, Ani thought, for the first time that morning, genuinely at a loss.
"I shall set it on the stool," he said, to nobody.
He crossed the floor. He laid the jacket on the little wooden stool at the passage door, folded once, with the care of laying down what will be asked for. He stood a moment with his hand flat on it. Then he came back, and took his place, and held out his left hand to Ani and his right to Leah.
Ani took it. It was dry and warm and steady. She gave her other hand to Vartan, who took it hard, and she closed her eyes, once, briefly, and opened them.
The ring was half closed. On the far side, Dinshaw had Mrs. Daruwalla's hand in one of his and was patting it with the other. The two aunts stood side by side. The priest from Navsari had put his chin up. Roshan, at the end, stood with her arms still folded, and said in a clear brisk voice, in the silence, "Wait."
Everyone turned.
"Dr. Sarkisian," said Roshan.
She had unfolded her arms. She stood upright, in her gray sari, a small hard woman of sixty with a braid pinned up and her chin lifted. Ani saw Delnaz's mouth go thin. Roshan had watched a train coming for a long time and had decided, at the last moment, to step in front of it, and her face said so.
"I should like to ask," said Roshan, "what is in your pocket."
There was a pause of about two seconds.
"I beg your pardon?" Leah said.
"Your left hip. I have been looking at it for an hour. I notice things; it is my occupation. It has been warm since we sat down. When the cloth began to shine, the warm place went on. You put your hand on it. You have kept your hand on it for forty minutes, as one keeps a hand on a child in a crowd." Roshan's eyes did not leave Leah's face. "It is a telephone. It is turned on. Somebody is on the other end of it, and has been since before the cabinet was opened, and has heard, I should think, everything that has been said in this room."
Nobody breathed. In the long silence Ani heard, far off, in the lane, a child laughing.
She looked at Leah. Leah looked at Roshan. She had not moved, and her face had not changed. But Ani saw the hand on the hip go still. She understood that her friend had known for forty minutes that this was coming, and had said nothing, hoping to be allowed to say nothing for ten more.
"Yes," Leah said.
"Who?"
"A man in Tel Aviv. His name is Ronen Katz. He's seventy-one." She said it quietly. "He's an old officer of a service I'd rather not name in this room, and he's the only reason there are two hundred people at your gate and not four men with a van. He gave us ten days. He's spent them on the telephone. He hasn't said a word since we sat down. I put him in my pocket because I wanted someone to know, in case—" She stopped. "In case I couldn't."
"A servant of a state."
"Yes."
"Listening," said Roshan, "to a matter that my father has taken fifty years to prepare and that my niece is about to put her life inside."
"Yes," said Leah. "I'm sorry. I should have told you."
"You should have told me."
"Yes."
"I do not accept your apology," said Roshan, in the same level voice. "I shall consider it afterwards." She turned. "Father."
The ring had stopped. Framroze stood in the middle of it, with his hand lifted, and for a time he said nothing. In the gaps of the shutter the daylight lay across the old man's shoes. Ani watched him look at Leah, and at the phone, and at his daughter, and at the table.
"I said," he said at last, mildly, "that I would return to the pocket."
A small sound went round the room. It was not quite laughter.
"The first promise is to be wholly in the room. A witness who is also somewhere else is not a witness. She is a window." The old man's voice was gentle. "I do not say that Dr. Sarkisian has done wrong. She has done what she believed would keep this house safe, and it may have. But I cannot bind a ring in which one of the hands is joined to a line that runs to another country. It is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of what a witness is."
"I know," said Leah.
"I think that you do."
"I'll end the call." She took her hand from her hip. It was shaking. "I'd like to say one sentence to him first. Is that all right?"
"It is."
She drew the phone out of her pocket, a small gray rectangle, warm, with the little red timer still counting on its face, and held it flat on her palm in the light of the two coverings. Ani saw the numbers. Two hours, thirteen minutes, nine seconds. She had been counting it too.
"Ronen," said Leah, into the phone, quite low. "I'm hanging up. I'm sorry. They need me in the room. I'll call after."
There was a pause. Then, small and clear, out of the tiny speaker, in the formal, courteous, tired voice that Ani remembered from one long call in Isfahan, a man spoke five words.
"Yes. Of course. Go well."
Leah pressed the button. The red numbers went out.
She stood a moment with the dead gray thing on her palm. Then she turned, and held it out, flat, with both hands, as one offers a plate, to Roshan.
Roshan took it. She looked at it. She turned it over, once, with an expression of distaste that she did not trouble to conceal. Then, with the brisk precision of twenty-two years running a house, she walked to the cabinet and opened the lower drawer of the chest beside it. She put the telephone in and shut the drawer.
"It will be returned," she said, "afterwards."
"Thank you," said Leah.
"You are not forgiven."
"I know."
"I am glad," said Roshan, and Ani saw, with a small shock, that her eyes were wet. "I am glad you told me. I should have disliked finding out by accident." She went back to the end of the ring. She took her place. She held out her left hand to Mrs. Daruwalla, and, with a short sharp nod to her father, her right to the empty air beside Jehangir, who gripped it.
The ring was closed.
It felt different at once.
Ani had been braced. She had not known for what. She had expected, perhaps, a hush, or a shiver, or the movement of light. There was none of it. What came was a sort of settling, the feeling of a heavy cart that has stood on a slope for a long time and has at last been chocked.
Twelve hands. Twenty-four. She could feel the pulse in Karam's palm, steady, and Vartan's, quick, and under both, as she stood there, a third thing she could not name. It was the sum. It was not the sum of twelve people, or eleven, or any number she had ever entered in a ledger. It came only when they were joined, as a chord comes only when the notes are struck together, and it lay in the room like warm water in a basin.
The light on the table had gone still. It no longer rose and fell. It lay steady and level, pale gold now, with the quality of late afternoon. The line of brightness between the two coverings had settled into a single straight bar, like a plumb line, hanging in the air between the table and the man who held the other.
He stood at its center. He had not moved. He held the first covering in both hands, bare-chested, gray, shivering, and his eyes were on the old man's face.
Framroze began to speak.
It was not English. It was not Gujarati, though it had the sound of Gujarati in it. It was older. The sound was low and level and rhythmic, like a slow tread. It went round the ring in a slow circle as the old man turned. She understood none of it, and understood all of it. To witness. To remember. To speak truly. To lift no hand. It came to her as the sound of a language comes to a child before she can read. She felt, rather than heard, the words settle on her shoulders.
When he stopped, there was a silence of about three heartbeats.
"Dr. Sarkisian," said Framroze.
Leah said it. Her voice was thin and steady. She said it in English, the four promises, as she had been told, and at the end she said, "I will not forget it. I will not be got round."
"Karam Yonan."
"I will witness," said Karam. "I will remember. I will speak truly if I am asked. I will lift no hand." He paused. "I should add that I have already, this morning, held the Colonel's coat. I do not intend to take it back."
A sound went round the ring. It was small and wet and relieved, and it was nearly a laugh.
"Ani Manukian."
She had not thought what she would say. She opened her mouth, and what came out was none of the four promises.
"I came because I was asked," said Ani. "I've brought nothing to show you but myself. Please tell us when to stop." She swallowed. "And yes. All four. I will."
Framroze looked at her for a moment with an expression she could not read. Then he bowed, once, slightly, in the direction of the shuttered window.
"Vartan Manukian."
"I will," said Vartan. His voice cracked on it. He cleared his throat. "All of it. I don't have anything clever. I'll remember. I'll tell the truth if someone asks. I'll keep my hands where they are."
They went round the ring. The priest from Navsari said it in the old language, quickly, as one says a familiar prayer. The aunts said it together, in thin high quavering unison, and one of them forgot a word and the other supplied it. Mrs. Daruwalla said it, and burst into tears, and finished it. Dinshaw said it slowly, as one reads out a price, and added, at the end, in Gujarati, a short phrase that made the priest laugh. Jehangir said it hoarsely. Roshan said it last, standing straight, in a voice like a blade being drawn. When she had finished she added, to nobody, "And I should like it recorded that I did not, at any point, approve of the telephone."
"It is recorded," said Framroze.
He lowered his hand.
"Then it is done," he said. "Twelve have been bound. It is a quarter to twelve." He looked at the two who stood in the center of the ring, in the pale steady light, one on each side of the table, and his voice altered. It lost its formality. It became, quite simply, an old man's. "Delnaz. Colonel. I would not rush you. I would ask only that when you are ready, you do not wait too long. The light does not like to wait."
Neither of them answered. Delnaz stood with her hands folded, white-faced, looking at the shining cloth on the table, and the man opposite her stood looking at the one in his own hands.
Ani, with a hand in each of her friends', in a ring that did not dare to break, did what she knew how to do.
She counted. Twelve hands. Eleven lights, if she counted the ones in the faces. One window, five boards, and a line of daylight that had crept, while the oath was said, across the matting, and touched, at last, the edge of the table.
It was eleven forty-six. The plane would land at two.