An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao

curfew’s working, sir,” Abheet Singh said.
    â€œYes, well,” Jenkins said. “That’s the only time things work in this country: when you don’t want them to.”
    They left the jeep under the peepal tree and began walking. Jenkins looked back at the jeep ruefully, as if it might be following them like a stray dog.
    By now the sun was beginning to set. The sky glowed with streaks of burnt orange and a pale and luminous green. Jenkins felt a thin breeze from the west though it was still hot. He wiped his face with a handkerchief; he was exhausted, the heat was dizzying. He felt strangely broken by it, and by the day, and by Delhi. He looked around him—at the endless desert sands and the houses made of earth and the thin dusty grasses wheezing in the wind and Abheet Singh walking beside him, his face alert and beautiful against the barren land—and it occurred to him that the vicar was right: he could never return to England. That just the thought of Warwick and the Midlands and his mother and his father and even the pubs and the cricket matches and the afternoon teas had become unbearable for him, that it was this barren land, in the end, that seemed to him the promised one.
    Maybe it was because of this thought that Jenkins shuddered, or maybe it was the one that followed: that he would soon have to leave, Pakistan would be born in a month’s time, and what need would they have for him, for any of the British? He thought of the days ahead, and the days upon days that awaited him, and all the concealment of these many long years and he thought in that moment that he could not take another step, that really, there were no steps left to be taken.
    Abheet Singh stopped in midstride. “Sir,” he said, “you’re trembling.”
    Jenkins looked down at his hands. His baton shook like a divining rod over water. His palms were clammy, cold, and yet his body burned and shook with sorrow; he gripped one arm with the other. “It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Feeling a bit off, is all.”
    Abheet Singh looked from his hands into his eyes. They were within sight of the police station, tucked behind a high gate. The road in front led off toward the marketplace in one direction and the emptiness of the desert in another. The country all around was quiet. But for the two of them it hardly seemed inhabited. Only the sparrows had ventured into the treetops, chirping as the sun set. Abheet Singh looked a long while into Jenkins’s eyes then slowly, almost tenderly, he reached toward him, wrapped his hand around his trembling wrist, and stilled it. The motion was so delicate, so utterly benevolent and sexless, that Jenkins could hardly breathe, and in that moment he thought he might’ve come to know, for the briefest moment, the thing for which he’d always yearned, the thing that was the opposite of his many, many lonely years, the opposite—at this, he closed his eyes—of his concealment.
    *   *   *
    When he thought back over the incident he could never decide what had come first: had Abheet Singh released his wrist first or had Jenkins looked away first. Though what he did recall with great clarity was that afterward he’d rushed through the station gates, straight past Iqbal, and disappeared into his office. He’d closed the door—something he’d never before done—and splashed water on his face from the bowl on the washstand. The water was nearly as hot as his skin. He’d then thrown himself into his chair, rose, paced then slumped back into the chair. He could still feel Abheet Singh’s hand on his wrist. The touch had seared, branded itself into his skin. In his recollections, even moments later as he sat at his desk, he felt their pulses pounding against each other’s like the sea against rock. How terrifying and how beautiful. Jenkins took a deep breath. But he must focus, he had no time to