Gravel Heart(81)
Baba shook his head. ‘Don’t think ill of her,’ he said. ‘It was the way she thought of Amir. She took too much responsibility.’
‘I don’t think ill of her, and I don’t think it was because she took too much responsibility for Uncle Amir. She just did not know what to do. They overwhelmed her in their separate ways,’ I said, and then said nothing more for a long time because I could see Baba was perturbed by what I had said or by the way I had said it. Then he sighed and looked up and nodded, inviting me to continue. ‘She knew what Uncle Amir was really like. You spoke of how shame emptied your life. Uncle Amir had no time for shame. It would have seemed like self-pity and selfishness to him, a weakness. He would have turned what sought to shame him into an insult, and blustered and hit out at it, as a man should. So when the moment came he pressed her to sacrifice what was required for his well-being, and she did because she did not know what else to do.’
‘Maybe we are saying something similar,’ Baba said after a little thought. ‘So you will be going back to London.’
I nodded. He waited patiently for me to speak then he said, ‘What are you smiling about?’
‘Did she always like plums? I remember she loved them,’ I said. ‘Sometimes she brought a bag home and we sat there and ate every single one until they were finished.’
‘Yes, she always loved plums but they were not easy to get here,’ Baba said. ‘We had to wait until they were in season on the mainland.’
‘They don’t taste the same in England somehow,’ I said. ‘Do you still have that Collected Shakespeare you used to have many years ago?’
‘Yes, Khamis kept everything,’ my father said, smiling at the thought of his friend. ‘He said he kept all the books because he was sure I would come back, so he must have known something I didn’t. I remember the first play I was able to read was Two Gentlemen of Verona.’
I asked: ‘Did you ever read Measure for Measure?’
My father shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I might’ve tried. Most of the plays were too difficult for me. I could not get past the zounds and exeunts and harks and rummage in yonder prologue, and usually found myself nodding off after two or three pages.’
I said, ‘When I first read the play I heard an echo which made me sad. Isabella made me think of Mama because I always guessed that there was some force behind what she did though I did not know about Uncle Amir. I was just not convinced about the perfidious brother who tried to persuade his sister to submit to Lord Angelo whose heart was sick with a bullying lust. What brother would do a thing like that?’
‘Tell me about the play,’ Baba said.
This is what I told him. The Duke of Vienna, wishing to test his deputy Lord Angelo, arranges to go on a long journey and leaves him in charge of the city. Lord Angelo has a reputation for high-mindedness and virtue, which the Duke must have had some doubts about, because in reality he does not leave the city but disguises himself and hides in a monastery. Lord Angelo is zealous in his righteousness, and thinks the Duke has been too lenient in his application of the law, turning a blind eye to all kinds of improprieties. One of the first things Lord Angelo does, when he thinks himself free to operate without hindrance, is to order the arrest of Claudio, who has been living in sin with his betrothed, Juliet, who is now pregnant. He orders the execution of the young man for the crime of fornication, a penalty the law allows. Execution, you might think, how barbaric! But that is all that Viennese law allows him to do when he might have wanted to do more, disembowel and castrate him for a start. Also, he only arrests Claudio and condemns him to death when he might have done the same for Juliet as well, pregnant or not. In some parts of the Muslim world where they prize purity and obedience, they know how to deal with fornicators, who are almost always women. They dig a hole in the ground, put the woman in it up to the neck, fill up the hole leaving the head exposed, and then stone the fornicator to death. All Lord Angelo does is to arrest the man and order his execution, and he leaves the woman to the nuns. Yet even that sanction, which the law allows, the Duke, with his tolerant ways, has permitted to lapse.
As he is escorted to jail, Claudio meets an acquaintance, Lucio, a frequenter of brothels, a maker of mischief, and a loud-mouthed chatterbox full of tedious jokes. Claudio explains to Lucio about this arrest and asks him to let his sister Isabella know, so that she may appeal to Lord Angelo for clemency. Isabella is about to take her vows as a nun but when she receives this news she agrees to do as Claudio asks, go to Lord Angelo and plead for her brother’s life. She knows, like everyone else, that to get the smallest thing you desire, unless you are born to it, you have to plead and beg. She is admitted to Lord Angelo, who tells her that Claudio is to be executed first thing the next day: no talk of mercy, no use wheedling me, it is the law, no hanging around.
Isabella addresses Lord Angelo with spirit, pleading and courteous at first, and then when she realises that he is a hard, self-righteous man, she accuses him of unnecessary harshness and cruelty. She does enough, she thinks, to be allowed to come back the next day to hear Lord Angelo’s answer to her pleas. So, at least she has delayed the execution and has given herself some hope of saving her brother. What she doesn’t know is that Lord Angelo has been struck by her beauty and, perversely, by her virtue, and now desires her to submit sexually to him. When she returns the next day he tells her so in unmistakable terms: Plainly conceive I love you. If she wants Claudio to live, she must yield to him. Isabella, the novice nun, is appalled at this cruel seduction and expects Claudio to be as well, but when she tells her brother he tries to persuade her to agree to Lord Angelo’s demands. Death is a fearful thing. What sin you do to save a brother’s life becomes a virtue. Now the Duke gets involved. He has had his answer about Lord Angelo’s suitability to rule, the dirty hypocrite, but he needs to catch him in the act of misrule. By a series of stratagems the Duke foils Lord Angelo, saves Isabella’s honour and himself proposes marriage to her. It is a play, after all.