"Yes. Yes, that's agreed."

"Was there anything else?"

"Well, no."

"Excellent. Then, to business: I have very little time today, Mr.

Lin, so I will come directly to the point of the matter. The favour that I mentioned yesterday-I want you to teach one small boy, named Tariq, the English language. Not everything, of course, but enough that his English will be considerably improved, and that he will have some little advantage when he begins his formal studies."

"Well, I'll be happy to try," I stammered, bewildered by the request, but not daunted by it. I felt competent to teach the fundamentals of the language that I wrote in every day of my life. "I don't know how _good I'll be at it. I think there must be a lot of people who'd be better than I would, but I'm happy to take a shot at it. Where do you want me to do it? Would I come here to teach him?"

He looked at me with benign, almost affectionate condescension.

"Why, he will stay with you, naturally. I want you to have him with you, constantly, for the next ten or twelve weeks. He will live with you, eat with you, sleep at your house, go where you go. I do not simply want that he learns the English _phrases. I want that he learns the English way. Your way. I want that he learns this, with your constant company."

"But... but I'm not English," I objected stupidly.

"This is no matter. You are English enough, don't you think? You are a foreigner, and you will teach him the ways of a foreigner.

It is my desire."

My mind was hot, my thoughts scattered and flapping like the birds that he'd startled with his voice. There had to be a way out. It was impossible.

"But I live at the zhopadpatti. You know that. It's very rough.

My hut is really small, and there's nothing in it. He'll be uncomfortable. And it's... it's dirty and crowded and... where would he sleep and all that?"

"I am aware of your situation, Mr. Lin," he replied, a little sharply. "It is precisely this, your life in the zhopadpatti, that I want him to know. Tell me your honest opinion, do you think that there are lessons to be learned in the slum? Do you think he will benefit from spending some time with the city's poorest people?"

I did think that, of course. It seemed to me that every child, beginning with the sons and daughters of the rich, would benefit from the experience of slum life.

"Yes, I suppose I do. I do think it's important to see how people live there. But you have to understand, it's a huge responsibility for me. I'm not doing a spectacular job of looking after myself. I don't know how I could look after a kid."

Nazeer arrived with the tea and a prepared chillum.

"Ah, here is our tea. We shall first smoke, yes?"

We first smoked. Nazeer squatted on his haunches to smoke with us. As Khaderbhai puffed on the clay funnel, Nazeer gave me a complex series of nods, frowns, and winks that seemed to say, Look, see how the master smokes, see what a great lord he is, see how much he is, that you and I will never be, see how lucky we are to be here with him. Nazeer was a head shorter than I was, but I guessed that he was at least several kilos heavier. His neck was so thick that it seemed to draw his powerful shoulders up towards his ears. The bulky arms that stretched the seams of his loose shirt appeared to be only slightly more slender than his thighs. His broad, permanently scowling face was composed of three downward curves, something like the insignia of sergeant's stripes. The first of them consisted of his eyebrows, which began a little above and in the centre of his eyes, and descended with bristling unruliness along the slope of his frown to the level of the eyes themselves.

The second curve began in the deep grooves at the wings of his nose, and divided his face all the way to the jaw. The third was drawn by the desperate, pugnacious unhappiness of his mouth, the upside-down horseshoe of bad luck that fate had nailed to the doorpost of his life.

A ridge of purplish scar tissue was prominent on the brown skin of his forehead. His dark eyes moved in their deep hollows like hunted things, constantly seeking concealment. His ears looked as though they'd been chewed by some beast that had blunted its teeth on them, and given up the task. His most striking feature was his nose, an instrument so huge and magnificently pendulous that it seemed designed for some purpose altogether more grand than merely inhaling air and fragrances. I thought him ugly, then, when I first knew him, not so much for the unbeautiful set of his features as for their joylessness. It seemed to me that I'd never seen a human face in which the smile had been so utterly defeated.

The chillum returned to me for the third time, but the smoke was hot and tasted foul. I announced that it was finished. Nazeer seized it from me roughly and puffed with furious determination, managing to extract a dirty brown cloud of smoke. He tapped the gitak stone out onto his palm to reveal a tiny residue of white ash. Making sure that I was watching, he blew the ash from his hand to the ground at my feet, cleared his throat menacingly, and then left us.

"Nazeer doesn't like me very much."

Khaderbhai laughed. It was a sudden and very youthful laugh. I liked it, and I was moved to join him, though I didn't really understand why he was laughing.

"Do you like Nazeer?" he asked, still laughing.

"No, I guess I don't," I answered, and we laughed all the harder.

"You do not want to teach Tariq English, because you do not want the responsibility," he said, when the laughter had subsided.

"It's not just that... well, yes, it is just that. It's..." I looked into those golden eyes, pleading with them. "I'm not very good with responsibility. And this... this is a lot of responsibility. It's too much. I can't do it."

He smiled, and reached out to rest his hand on my forearm.

"I understand. You are worried. It is natural. You are worried that something might happen to Tariq. You are worried that you will lose your freedom to go where you want, and to do what you want. This is only natural."

"Yes," I murmured, relieved. He did understand. He knew that I couldn't do what he asked. He was going to let me off the hook.

Sitting there, on the low stool beside his chair, I had to look up at him, and I felt at some disadvantage. I also felt a sudden rush of affection for him, an affection that seemed to proceed from and depend upon the inequalities between us. It was vassal love, one of the strongest and most mysterious human emotions.

"Very well. My decision is this, Lin-you will take Tariq with you, and have him remain with you for two days. If, after this forty-eight hours, you think it is impossible for the situation to continue, you will bring him back here, and I will ask no more of you. But I am sure that he will be no problem to you. My nephew is a fine boy."

"Your... nephew?"

"Yes, the fourth son of my youngest sister, Farishta. He is eleven years old. He has learned some English words, and he speaks Hindi, Pashto, Urdu, and Marathi fluently. He is not so tall for his age, but he is most sturdy in his health."

"Your nephew-," I began again, but he cut me off quickly.

"If you find that you can do this thing for me, you will see that my dear friend in the zhopadpatti, Qasim Ali Hussein-you know him, of course, as the head man-he will help you in every way.

He will arrange for some families, including his own, to share your responsibility, and provide homes for the boy to sleep in, as well as your own. There will be many friends to help you look after Tariq. I want him to know the hardest life of the poorest people. But above all, I want him to have the experience of an English teacher. This last thing means a great deal to me. When I was a boy..."

He paused, allowing his gaze to shift and settle on the fountain and the wet surface of the great, round boulder. His eyes gleamed, reflecting the liquid light on the stone. Then a grave expression passed across them like a cloud-shadow slinking over smooth hills, on a sunny day.