Maps for Lost Lovers

collapsible petals of a flower. They were unable to resist the pull of his raised hand and more and more would arrive out of the black air to spin around it like planets bound to a sun through gravity. Sometimes the three children accompanied him on these nocturnal gathering trips; and during the day the children were often sent out to collect specimens from around the town and across the surround ing countryside, guided by exactly sketched maps, the precisely worded instructions removing every possibility of error.
    . . . The greenish-grey twigs of the Guelder Rose tree are angular and smooth, and the leaves are covered with a silver down. I had pointed one out to you during the drive to see the beached minke whale last year, so you will remember the flower heads . . .
    . . . Do not be tempted to help the butterfly out of the chrysalis, should you find one that is about to emerge. It would come out grey if you do. The effort to split open the chrysalis forces the blood into the wings, imparting colour and pattern . . .
    Once a week, the information about the county’s butterflies and moths was typed up and one of the boys bicycled with the pages to the offices of the local evening newspaper— The Afternoon —where it ran as a column with India-ink illustrations by the elder boy. The typewriter—the keys arranged in rows one above another always reminding Shamas of faces in a school photograph—was bought by Shamas when he arrived in England all those years ago, with the thought that one day soon he would write poetry again, but it had remained unused on the whole until Jugnu came from the United States and began producing his pieces for The Afternoon.
    The river is black as tar against the surrounding snow, a rip in the white scarf tossed down by the sky. Miles downriver, beyond the outskirts of the town, the river passes the ivy-clad ruin of the abbey where the Sikhs ceremonially cast the ashes of their dead into the water; when the practice began a decade or so ago, the inhabitants of the nearby all-white suburb had been outraged, but the bishop had settled the matter by saying he was delighted the site was being put to a spiritual use, rather than the open-air dog lavatory he was sorry to say those who were now complaining had turned it into.
    Filled and concealed by snow, a depression in the earth has swallowed his left leg up to the knee, and in pulling himself upright he disinters segments of rowan leaves and red berries, the limb bringing them up to the surface as it emerges from the ground, and there are some blue fish scales, each resembling a boiled sweet sucked down to a sharp sliver between tongue and roof of mouth.
    Shamas can see the large pea-green hut that is the Hindu temple, a simple structure set beside the river like something in a join-the-dot book belonging to a very young child, the pine trees reaching towards the sky behind it. Wooden steps lead to the water’s edge from the door.
    Nothing untoward appeared to have occurred here.
    Icicles are dripping brightly at the edge of the roof, drilling holes in the snow the size of half-penny coins. The pipes must have frozen during the night because Poorab-ji is collecting water from the river to wash his hands, leaning from the lowest step and selecting a wave before holding the lip of the shiny brass garvi vessel in its path to let it swirl home. It’s more a wooden path to the river’s edge than a series of steps: wide square treads with very short strips of verticals in between. From there Poorab-ji lifts one earth-covered hand at him in greeting. “I have just buried a goldfinch, Shamas-ji. It broke its neck on that windowpane. See if you can spot where.” Delicate in visage, he is soft-lipped and has a long neck, and like a large number of middle-aged men from the Subcontinent he dyes his hair a startling pure black.
    The canopy of each rowan tree growing along the river is perfectly spherical, like a firework exploding in the sky.
    “Here.” Poorab-ji has approached and pinpoints the tiny notch the bird’s beak had tapped out on the glass. From his pocket he takes a clumsy rhinestone and fits it into place on the pane, holding his palm under it in case it falls out. “I found it in its beak.”
    As an explanation for this unusual visit Shamas relates all that has transpired at the mosque, but Poorab-ji tells him that there has been no incident here since the vandalism back in October which Shamas already knows about. The feuds of