Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut

seal the carapace, and he began to do what was necessary. It was part of a willed cheerfulness he had learned, back in his childhood already, as protection against disappointment. The only defence against raw, naked feeling was reason. Understanding made sadness easier to bear.
    So the thoughts that he followed, one by one, were like stairs ascending out of his misery, each of them valid and genuine, leading on from the one before. They went something like this:
Masood cares for me more than for any other man, I have known that for a long time. That is comforting. And much that has passed between us on this visit has made me very happy. That is good. To have a little, even a very little, can be enough to go on with; indeed, it’s all I have. Better to hold to that than to yearn continually for what isn’t possible
.
    In the end, you had to return to your own life—which he did now with an effort, by swimming out, blinking and half-blind, into the vertical light, to let the normal day reclaim him. It was like emerging from the tomb. He hurried back down the hill faster than he needed to, as if he were being pursued, to the tents and the smouldering fire and the elephant, ponderously browsing.
    Where by now breakfast was finally ready: after all the delay, a paltry smear of omelette with a cold chapatti and a mug of tea. But it was enough to restore his spirits and, as he sat in the shade chatting to Imdad Iman, he felt again the promise reviving in the vast landscape, with its blond, bleached colours, its scrubby bushes and old, tormented rocks. He knew already that this parting would eventually become a painful detail in a much larger event, one which was still unfolding before him.
    Over the past three months, India had already violently rearranged his life, but it wasn’t done with him yet; not by a long way.
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    * * *
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    His journey had begun in Aligarh. He had come all the way around the world for one reason only. And although his travels had barely begun, in another sense they felt already complete as he stood on a railway station platform at two-thirty in the morning, embracing Masood.
    â€œAt last, you are here,” his friend told him.
    â€œI believe I am.”
    â€œHow do I look? Am I older?”
    He had thickened in the middle, and some stray hairs had turned white, but Morgan said, “You look no different.”
    â€œNor you. I have thought of nothing except this moment for the past ten years.”
    â€œYou have only known me for six.”
    â€œHave I? Well, I speak metaphorically. My great love for you makes time seem much bigger.” But Masood was already yawning as he swept out of the station and towards the waiting tonga.
    When Morgan had woken up the next morning, it was into rather than out of a dream: the window showed an acre of garden, filled with loud, brilliant and exotic birds. Weird lizards scuttled across the walls and unusual insects hovered in the air. Masood had given up his bedroom to him and was sleeping in the sitting room close by; Morgan knew where he was, and yet he wasn’t quite sure of anything. Here was an inversion of the world that had held them in England, where the view had always been known and tame, and it was only Masood who had been out of place. Now it was the Englishman’s turn to be the stranger, the visitor. The idea of it pleased him greatly, and took him some way into another world—yet that world refused entirely to open for him.
    When Masood woke an hour or two later and came lazily through to his room, almost his first question was what Morgan wanted to do that day.
    â€œHonestly, the most important undertaking, as far as I can see, is to meet your mother. I would like to thank her for giving birth to you. Or else to punish her for it, I can’t make up my mind.”
    He had been wanting to greet Mahmoud Begum for a long time already, and he had brought some small gifts for her from England. But the