Page 67 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Soon, we were conversing daily, Nila and I, usually in the late
morning when she sat sipping coffee on the veranda. I would saunter over under
the pretense of some task or other and there I was, leaning against a shovel, or
tending to a cup of green tea, speaking to her. I felt privileged that she had
chosen me. I was not the only servant, after all; I have already mentioned that
unscrupulous toad Zahid, and there was a jowly-faced Hazara woman who came
twice a week to wash laundry. But it was me she turned to. I was the only one, I
believed, including her own husband, with whom her loneliness lifted. She
usually did most of the talking, which suited me well; I was happy enough to be
the vessel into which she poured her stories. She told me, for instance, of a
hunting trip to Jalalabad she had taken with her father and how she had been

haunted for weeks by nightmares of dead deer with glassy eyes. She said she had
gone with her mother to France when she was a child, before the Second World
War. To get there, she had taken both a train and a ship. She described to me
how she had felt the jostling of the train wheels in her ribs. And she remembered
well the curtains that hung from hooks and the separated compartments, and the
rhythmic puff and hiss of the steam engine. She told me of the six weeks she had
spent the year before in India with her father when she had been very ill.
Now and then, when she turned to tap ash into a saucer, I stole a quick glance
at the red polish on her toenails, at the gold-tinged sheen of her shaved calves,
the high arch of her foot, and always at her full, perfectly shaped breasts. There
were men walking this earth, I marveled, who had touched those breasts and
kissed them as they had made love to her. What was left to do in life once you
had done that? Where did a man go next once he’d stood at the world’s summit?

It was only with a great act of will that I would snap my eyes back to a safe spot
when she turned to face me.
As she grew more comfortable, she registered with me, during these morning
chats, complaints about Mr. Wahdati. She said, one day, that she found him
aloof and often arrogant.
“He has been most generous to me,” I said.

She flapped one hand dismissively. “Please, Nabi. You don’t have to do that.”
Politely, I turned my gaze downward. What she said was not entirely untrue.
Mr. Wahdati did have, for instance, a habit of correcting my manner of speech
with an air of superiority that could be interpreted, perhaps not wrongly, as
arrogance. Sometimes I entered the room, placed a platter of sweets before him,
refreshed his tea, wiped his crumbs off the table, and he would no more
acknowledge me than he would a fly crawling up the screen door, shrinking me