A Canopy of Rose Leaves (8 page)

‘But of course,’ Reza responded. ‘You have missed nothing, however. Miss Deborah has only learned a couple of phrases—nothing of importance—hardly any of the sentences I should like her to learn!’

‘And me too?’ Maxine encouraged him.

‘There are other phrases for you to learn.’ He gave her an intimate look. ‘I have to remember that your brother speaks a little Farsi, no? Supposing he were to disapprove of what I teach you?’

‘Howard wouldn’t care,’ Maxine murmured.

‘But he is your brother, Miss Maxine. He cares more than you think about what happens to you!’

Deborah saw Maxine’s mouth close mutinously and she had little doubt as to what the American girl was thinking. Maxine had liked Reza from the first and she wouldn’t be at all pleased if she were to discover that her liking for him was not returned with interest.

‘I’ve had enough of the bazaar,’ she said out loud. ‘It’s too busy to be an ideal place for a language lesson. Why don’t we go somewhere else?’

Maxine turned bright, pleading eyes on to Reza’s face. ‘Take us to see the Hafez Memorial,’ she pleaded with him. ‘Or Saadi’s, if it’s nearer.
Nothing
could be more calculated to please Howard than that!’

‘It is pretty,’ Reza agreed. ‘But it is not old. There are other places that are more secluded—more to the modern taste!’

Maxine slanted a glance at the English girl. ‘Well, Deborah?’

‘I’d like to pay my respects to Hafez,’ Deborah began, and broke off when she saw Maxine’s frown.

‘I thought you had business in the square,’ Maxine said meaningly.

Deborah looked questioningly at Maxine. ‘I could have,’ she said doubtfully.

‘No, no,’ Reza said at once. ‘I am sorry, but it wouldn’t be suitable for me to take Miss Maxine by herself. If Miss Deborah cannot come this morning we must go some other time.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Maxine agreed with a grudging look at Deborah. ‘It doesn’t matter much. When you take us to meet your mother there will be plenty of time for us to talk without half the world listening to every word.’

‘Have you told your mother about us yet?’ Deborah asked him, carefully noting his reactions from beneath her eyelashes.

‘Of course, of course,’ he said easily. ‘I will arrange everything. You have nothing to fear!’ His too hot eyes met hers. ‘I will arrange everything,’ he repeated. ‘Now, let’s go to the Hafezieh and see if we can have our fortunes told. That is what every girl likes, yes?’

Maxine laughingly agreed that it was. ‘I guess one makes one’s own fortune, but it might be fun. What happens?’

Reza’s good spirits were magically restored to him. ‘It may not happen today, but many people go to the grave of Hafez and choose a verse from his writings at random, finding their future in the words. Hafez is the greatest lyricist who ever lived!’

Deborah was far from being convinced of that, but Maxine, well-schooled by her brother, giggled. ‘You don’t have to tell us that! Howard says his every word can be read at two levels, either at face value, as good, sensual love poetry, or as a running commentary on the glories of the Koran and the Moslem way of life. Wasn’t he a
sufi,
or a whirling dervish, or something?’

‘He was not a true
sufi
, though he was something of a mystic,’ Reza answered, unamused by her levity. ‘Wine, love and roses are things in themselves in his works and should be appreciated as such. To the true
sufi
they are only symbols of a deeper religious experience.’

Maxine giggled again. ‘You sound
exactly
like Howard!’ she told him. ‘Don’t tell me that you get all broody and peculiar whenever the man’s name is mentioned too?’

‘I don’t know what this broody is!’ Reza replied huffily.

‘Well, you’re giving a pretty good imitation of it,’ Maxine advised him. She turned impatiently to Deborah. ‘Thank goodness the boys back home do something else besides cluck over someone who’s been dead for six hundred years!’

‘You have no one six hundred years old to talk about!’ Reza retorted. ‘It’s as well to be modern, but it’s better to have a glorious history too!’

Maxine faced up to him with determination. ‘We’ve done a fair amount in the last two hundred years,’ she claimed. ‘What have you done?’

Reza stared at her. ‘You do not wish to visit the Hafezieh?’

‘Yes, of course I do!’ Maxine snapped. She smiled suddenly and, looking very pretty in her repentance. ‘I’m sorry, Reza. I can’t help it if I prefer the up-to-date to anything that happened in history.’

Reza smiled too. ‘I, too, prefer the up-to-date,’ he told her. ‘I have had a modern education, like yours, and I prefer the technical to the poetic. We mustn’t disappoint Miss Deborah, though. She has dreams in her eyes that Hafez will turn to reality if she listens to his voice.’

Deborah smiled. ‘I probably won’t understand any of his poetry,’ she said.

‘No?’ Reza’s eyes flashed as he looked at her. ‘But I shall be there to interpret it for you! I shall like that very much!’

The main road of Shiraz cuts through the middle of the long tunnel that is the bazaar. Porters struggle through the traffic, their loads several times their own size weighing them down as they dice with death, weaving their way back and forth, ignoring the wailing horns of the cars and buses as they screech to a standstill a few inches from the indifferent passengers.

Reza went ahead of the two girls, as careless of the traffic as everyone else. Once he had them safely on the other side, he began to step back into the road, shouting at every taxi that passed them by. At last one drew into the curb and he helped the girls into it, crowding them in on top of the two passengers who were already inside. A few coins exchanged hands with the driver and they all made themselves as small as possible to make the brief journey more bearable for the others.

‘The road to perfection,’ Deborah muttered. But the allusion was lost on her companions.

‘At least Howard will be pleased with us for visiting the last resting place of his hero,’ Maxine put in. ‘He only thought it before, but now he’ll be convinced that Deborah is a good influence on me. I’d never have gone, left to myself!’

But she exclaimed over the beautiful garden that surrounded the memorial buildings as much as anyone else. The grass was watered by hand until it was green and vivid against the paved pathways and the freshly turned earth of the flower beds. Then, as if the beds were not large enough, potted petunias were arranged in patterns, thus adding to the blaze of colour that led up the Mausoleum itself. A domed canopy stood on seven pillars over the modern tomb of Shams al-Din Muhammad, better known as Hafez, or ‘He who knows the Koran by heart’. Some verses by the poet were carved into the stone in a handsome cursive script, but which these were, Deborah had no means of knowing. She had eyes only for the old man who sat in the shade of the marble canopy, his gaze turned upwards to the tiled faience that decorated the inside of the dome. He was wearing the traditional Moslem robes and a turban on his head, and she was quite sure that the book in his hands was a copy of the Divan of Hafez.

‘Will he tell our fortunes?’ she asked.

‘It may be so,’ Reza said with proper caution. He spoke to the old man, who looked at the two girls and smiled, saying something himself in return.

‘What does he say?’ Maxine demanded.

‘He says if you choose a passage, he will tell you what it may mean for you. Who will go first?’

‘I shall,’ Maxine said at once. She took the book from the old man and turned over the badly printed pages, getting more excited by the moment. ‘Here!’ she said at last. ‘Whatever this verse says here.’

The old man looked where she was pointing and recited the verse in Persian, his head nodding to the rhythm.

‘He says,’ Reza translated more slowly, ‘that she is able, because of her character and the way she dresses and uses herself, to lay traps for the far-sighted, but she will never capture wisdom for herself. It means,’ he went on even more slowly, ‘that she will have her choice of many men to marry, but the one whom she knows to be the most outstanding will marry elsewhere.’ He laughed, his white teeth flashing in the sunlight. ‘She will not mind very much!’ he teased her.

‘It sounds all right to me,’ Maxine congratulated herself. ‘I wonder what he’ll say about Deborah!’

Deborah took the book with a trembling hand. She felt as though a shadow lay over her, blocking out the light from the sun. She already knew what Hafez had to say to her:
‘and o’er Her head the minstrel of the night shall fling A canopy of rose leaves, score on score’.
She had no need to know anything more.

She shut her eyes and pointed blindly at the page, biting her lip as she did so.

‘What does it say?’ Maxine demanded, pressing forward to see the better as if she hoped to read the words for herself.

‘It says,’ Reza translated with a sudden gaiety, ‘that you must not sit alone for one moment without your beloved, for these days are for you the ones of roses, jasmine and celebration. You see how it is, Miss Deborah? You are already known to the man who will possess your heart and it’s too late for you to draw back. Your fate is here and now. It must be the reason why you came to Iran!’

Deborah went white. ‘No, no, it can’t be!’ She pulled herself together with difficulty. ‘I don’t believe in fortune-telling anyway. Besides, I’ve met no one in Iran who would ever want to marry me!’

‘He didn’t say a word about marriage,’ Maxine drawled. ‘Nor did he say anything about the man loving you—only that you’re already in love with him and that, figuratively speaking, you’re sitting at his feet in your heart now. It could be true, if anyone could feel that way about Howard, but nobody could!’

Deborah wasn’t prepared to go quite as far as that. ‘Howard is much nicer than you give him credit for,’ she declared. She spread her hands on the stone tomb. ‘I don’t think I could ever be in love with him, though.’

Reza returned the book to the old man, thanking him briefly for his trouble. When he turned back to the girls, his face was pale and serious. ‘There is another man you know,’ he reminded Deborah. ‘He would like it if you were to get to know him better!’

Maxine frowned. ‘There’s Roger,’ she murmured, ‘but he doesn’t count. He’d never look at someone like Deborah.’ She laughed, delicately touching the corner of her mouth with a single, elegant finger. ‘Besides, he has other interests,’ she added smugly, ‘and the longer he keeps them the better!’

Reza was not interested. ‘We have not thought of the right day for you to visit my mother,’ he reminded them. ‘I have a free day in a week’s time. Would that be suitable for you?’

‘Why not?’ said Maxine.

Deborah hesitated a moment longer. ‘Don’t you think you should check with your mother first?’ she temporised. ‘She may be doing something else.’ Then she caught sight of Reza’s astounded face. ‘You do mean today week, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, a week, today. My mother will be waiting for you—that is, if you wish to come with me? You do wish it. Miss Deborah? There is nothing else you wish to do that day?’

‘No,’ she said hastily. ‘It’s very kind of your mother to invite us. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

Reza made a strange gesture with his hand. ‘She and Miss Maxine will have a great deal to talk about together, about America, and other things too. We shall have much time to continue with our Farsi lesson, and for you to see my family home.’

Deborah managed a rather weak smile. ‘I’d like to talk to your mother too,’ she said. ‘There are so many things I want to ask her about the traditional crafts of Persia!’

‘There will be time for everything,’ Reza smiled at her. ‘We have much time. And maybe you will find other things to discuss other than this shop of yours with us both. You need not spend only one day at my home, but a week, or two weeks, if you would like it? My mother will be honoured if you do so.’

Deborah gave him a thoughtful look. ‘I think not—’

‘Good heavens, no!’ Maxine cut across her protest. ‘One day will be enough for all of us! If your mother wants us for longer, she can issue her own invitation! You’re not to make her do what she doesn’t want to, Reza. She may have married your father, but she’s still an American and she’ll have her own ideas as to what she wants to do, and if she hasn’t she jolly well ought to have!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

It
was Howard who raised the first objection to the proposed visit to Reza’s mother.

‘I don’t think you ought to go alone,’ he said diffidently. He didn’t quite look at either girl. His hair fell into his eyes and, although it was still early in the day, he was already sweating profusely. With an effort he brought his mind to bear on the problem. ‘You see—er—it might cause difficulties.’

‘Difficulties?’ Maxine repeated, exasperated. ‘What difficulties?’

Howard’s sweating face coloured to an unattractive red. ‘We have people coming to stay.
You
know, Maxine. You were there when they said they might come if they could. Well, they are coming.’

Maxine looked at her brother with ill-concealed delight. ‘People,’ she said. ‘What people, for heaven’s sake?’

Howard muttered something about California. ‘I don’t remember his name,’ he added, ‘but you ought to. You went about with him for long enough!’

Maxine was suddenly still, her face more serious than Deborah had ever seen it. ‘Are you talking about David Edgar?’

‘I guess so,’ Howard agreed. ‘Yes, that’s his name all right. I remember now. Well, he’s coming on a visit to look us up.’

Maxine was deathly white. ‘Howard, I know you’re not really on this earth at all, but you might have remembered that I came to Iran with you to get
away from
David Edgar.’

Howard blinked at her. ‘Sure, I remember that,’ he claimed, not without indignation. ‘But what was I to say? That he couldn’t come and see us while he’s in Shiraz?’

‘No, but you could have thought of something! I won’t see David! I will not! I’ll go and stay with Mrs. Mahdevi until he’s gone!’

‘You can’t do that,’ her brother said flatly. ‘I told him you’d be here. He wants to see your latest work—’

‘I haven’t done any!’

Howard shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’d better tell him that. He isn’t coming to see me and that’s a fact. I didn’t ask him either. We had enough of your friends running wild all over the place back home! They don’t do a hand’s turn themselves and their main object in life seems to be to prevent anyone else from doing any either—’

‘David works hard enough!’

‘It depends what you mean by work!’ Howard snapped. ‘He’s always been contemptuous of anything I might choose to do, but his silly daubs are something different!
You
asked him here, Maxine, and you can look after him! I won’t have him sitting there and sneering at me on my own. If you go to the Mahdevis, I’ll take myself off somewhere too!’

‘But I didn’t ask him!’ Maxine protested. ‘I didn’t! And where would you go?’

‘I daresay Roger would put me up for a few days,’ Howard said.

Sensing that this would turn into an all too familiar family row, Deborah got silently up from the breakfast table and prepared to slip away to her room, leaving the Reinhardts to have their quarrel in peace. It was the first she had heard of David Edgar, but Howard frequently mentioned the names of the many male friends Maxine had left behind her .in California and Deborah had built up a picture of the other girl’s life at home, the centre of a large circle of admirers, eagerly enjoying everything that came her way.

‘Where are you going?’ Maxine demanded. ‘Debbie, I need your help! Someone has to put David off!’

‘But if he’s already on his way—?’ Deborah began.

‘I won’t see him!’

‘She’s just being silly,’ Howard added, his expression as stubborn as his sister’s. ‘She never liked him much, not until he walked off with my girl! Then, suddenly, she couldn’t bear the sight of him. If that isn’t just like a woman! It wasn’t as though he had done anything to her!’

Deborah was less than convinced of that. ‘Is he bringing his wife with him?’ she asked, hoping that the question wouldn’t raise yet another storm.

Howard’s mouth jerked again. ‘He didn’t marry her,’ he muttered. ‘Said he’d only wanted to paint her in the first place!’

Deborah sat down again. ‘Have you known him long?’ she asked brightly.

‘David?’ Maxine frowned at her. ‘Of course I have! We went through grade school together—and high school. Then he went away to college somewhere in the East, but we still kept in touch. We never had all that much to do with each other. We never went around together, or anything like that, but we
knew
each other okay. He lived just down the road from us.’

‘And he paints too?’ Deborah prompted her.

Maxine nodded, looking rather white. ‘Not too,’ she said. ‘Better than anyone! If I had an eighth of his talent I’d be a happy woman. I’ve always felt that someone should look after him and see that he has time to work, but everyone puts on him all the time. It’s too bad!’

Howard leered at her. ‘Why shouldn’t he support himself as everyone else has to? He claims to have his share of brains, why doesn’t he use them?’

Maxine bristled angrily. ‘Last time I saw him he was wearing a Phi Beta Kappa key—’

‘He probably stole it, or borrowed it,’ Howard said disparagingly.

‘Only a fool would do that—a fool like you!’ his sister retorted. ‘I guess Roger might belong to a similar British fraternity, but I didn’t ever hear that you graduated well enough—’

Howard turned brick red with fury. ‘I could have done!’

‘What is a Phi Beta Kappa key anyway?’ Deborah interposed hastily.

‘It’s an academic fraternity restricted to those who graduate from university with the highest academic honours,’ Maxine told her, keeping one eye on her brother. ‘The badge is in the shape of a key and is most often worn on the watch-chain. That’s what Howard doesn’t like about David. He’s a genius as an artist
and
does better in Howard’s field than Howard can do himself and so Howard doesn’t like him. Naturally.’

‘I don’t like to think of him messing with any sister of mine,’ Howard insisted, an edge to his voice. ‘I don’t apologise for not liking him—the parents don’t like him either!’

Maxine sighed. ‘I don’t know that I
like
him myself,’ she said. ‘Geniuses are kind of hard to like, but his paintings are out of this world I One can’t have everything!’

‘He seems to have a pretty good try at it,’ Howard pointed out. ‘He had Janice running round in circles!’

Maxine’s face contracted into a tight smile. ‘What does he want with us here anyway?’

Howard shrugged. ‘He just said he was coming. Can’t you put off your visit to the Mahdevis until after he’s been? He won’t be staying long!’

‘Okay,’ said Maxine, ‘I’ll-stay. Deborah can go ahead without me. You don’t mind, do you, Debbie?’

Deborah did. ‘I’d rather put it off until we can go together,’ she murmured. ‘If David isn’t staying long—’

Maxine opened her eyes wide. ‘You’ll never make your fortune, honey, unless you make a start soon. Besides, I’d sooner see David on his own. I may think he’s a genius, but that doesn’t mean I approve his attitude to a great many things. I’m no man’s slave!’

Deborah wished her luck, but she still didn’t want to go to the Mahdevis by herself. Nothing could happen to her there, she knew that, but she was uncomfortable at the thought of spending too much time alone with Reza.

Reza was enthusiastic. ‘Miss Maxine can come later,’ he said, his voice light and exultant. ‘We shall be very pleased to see her. But it is better that you should come on your own,
kouchuk,
and have all my mother’s attention to yourself for a few days. There are so many things she wishes to show you, and Miss Maxine might have prevented her doing so, for she is less interested in our traditional crafts and culture.’

‘I thought it was she who attracted you in the first place,’ Deborah said drily. ‘Honestly, Reza, I’d rather wait until she can come too!’

Reza smiled. ‘We Iranians are more subtle than you allow.’

Deborah looked at him, raising her eyebrows a trifle. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning exactly what you think I mean,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you that day. Miss Maxine is not easily frightened, I think.’

‘And I am?’

He leaned towards her. ‘Are you?’

Now was the time to take a firm stand, she thought. She didn’t, and she never would, see him in a romantic light, and now was undoubtedly the time to say so.

‘Reza, it’s your mother I’m going to see,’ she began. ‘I don’t want you to get any ideas—’

‘Everything will be just as you wish, Miss Debbie. You don’t have to worry. I’ll look after you. You’ll see.’

As the day of her departure drew closer the temptation to get in touch with Roger grew within her. Once she thought she saw him at the other end of the street, and once in the bookshop close to the hotel where she had first stayed in Shiraz, but on both occasions he had vanished when she rushed up to speak to him.

‘Have you heard from Roger at all?’ she asked Maxine the evening before Reza was to collect her and take her to his mother.

Maxine nodded, her face thoughtful. ‘I asked him round to meet David and he said he’d come.’

Deborah gave her a concerned look. She thought the American girl had been looking pale ever since Howard had first told her of David’s coming.

‘They ought to have a great deal in common,’ she said aloud.

Maxine twisted her lips into a semblance of a smile. ‘He’ll probably agree with Howard about David. Most people do. He’s the most selfish person I’ve ever met. He doesn’t care how much he hurts anyone, even those closest to him. He says if they don’t like it they should get out of his way.’

‘And so you came to Persia,’ Deborah prompted her.

Maxine shook her head. ‘When we were kids, he asked every other girl out in the school, but he never asked me. He had a newspaper round in the mornings and again after school in the evenings, because his parents didn’t have much money and he had to buy his own extras. I used to tell myself that he didn’t ask me out because my family was rich and his wasn’t, but I was just kidding myself. I wasn’t what he wanted.’

‘But you wanted him?’

‘Oh, sure! He seemed like a man when all the others were still boys. Then one day when he came back from university he found out I was trying to paint too and he called round to take a look at my work. He was just the same, and I guess I was too, and he still didn’t have any time for me. He said when he wanted a girl he didn’t want a keeper. That was what was wrong with my work, I wasn’t involved in real life, and I wouldn’t let him live as he wants to live if he let me into his life. He even said that when we’d been at school I’d have done his newspaper round for him so that he didn’t have to get up early in the mornings!’ The pain in her voice told Deborah clearly how much that had hurt.

‘Would you have done?’ she asked gently.

Maxine nodded. ‘I’d have given him the whole world on a plate if he’d asked me to. I hadn’t realised that he knew it, though. My pride took a real battering that day and I took off. I came straight to Iran—anything so that I didn’t have to see him any more!’

‘Well, it looks as though he’s coming after you, doesn’t it?’

‘I doubt it. David’s always had an admiration for the Indo-Persian civilisation. I don’t flatter myself it’s me he’s coming to see. He won’t have given a thought to my feelings about his coming!’

Deborah hesitated. She didn’t think the other girl would welcome any advice that she might proffer, but she felt obliged to say something. ‘Why don’t you write and tell him that you don’t want him here?’ she suggested.

‘Because I do want him here. He’ll have my hide for not doing any work since I’ve been here, and I need that. He may not see me as a woman, but he does as a fellow artist. He’s the only person I know who’s genuinely interested in my work.’ She smiled a crooked smile. ‘Besides, one can’t help hoping, can one? It’s different from you and Ian,’ she added. ‘David isn’t married.’

Deborah accepted that. ‘I wasn’t really in love with Ian,’ she said. ‘He was an acceptable idea of what I thought my future ought to be. If you ask me I think I had a lucky escape.’

‘But it hurt all the same, I expect,’ Maxine murmured. ‘These things always do.’

‘It was unbearable,’ Deborah admitted. ‘Ian was the least of it. Funny really, because I was sure that my heart was broken!’

But Maxine didn’t join in her laughter. She looked as though she hadn’t heard a word that Deborah had been saying.

Reza’s vehicle was a jeep of a type Deborah had never seen before. It was a tough-looking car, reminiscent of the strong lines of the Range Rover, with a long body and plenty of clearance to make it easy to traverse the rough terrain off the main roads.

‘You are packed and ready to go?’ Reza asked as soon as he saw Deborah coming out of her bedroom.

‘Just about,’ she agreed. ‘Have I time for a cup of coffee before we go?’

Reza’s reluctance to linger would have amused her at another time. Today she found his impatience irritating and knew that she didn’t really want to go with him.

‘If you like. But, Deborah
-
jun
, my mother awaits your arrival and there are many, many things to show you on the way. You will wish to see Persepolis, no?’

‘Yes, but I hadn’t thought—’

‘Another day!’ he exclaimed. ‘We have many days when we can be together! You will have a fine time!’