In the hunting lodge at Dachigam, Max Ophuls reclining on carpets and cushions leaned backward, away from the Indian foreign minister, to whisper to Edgar Wood. “Get her details,” he said. Wood replied: “Sir, she’s allegedly buried in Lahore, Pakistan, and her real name was either Nadira Begum or Sharf-un-Nissa. Prince Salim gave her the love-name of Anarkali, meaning ‘pomegranate bud.’ Sir.” Max frowned. “Not the damn character, Wood. Not the damn apocryphal historical figure.” Wood grinned. “I’m on it, sir. I was just messing with you.” Max tolerated such cheekiness. It was a small price to pay for the services Wood so uncomplainingly, even enthusiastically rendered. He turned back to Swaran Singh, a soft-spoken man of simple habits whose charm and erudition were as great as Max’s own, and whom Max had begun to like very much. Swaran wanted to offer his own reaction to the dance piece. “You see, Akbar was remarkably tolerant of Hinduism,” he said. “Indeed his own wife Jodhabai, Salim’s mother, remained a practicing Hindu throughout their marriage. Interesting that class difference was where he drew the line. Suggests that as a people social order matters more to us than religious belief. Just like the English, eh? No wonder we hit it off so well.” Max laughed obligingly. “By the way,” added Swaran Singh, who was known for his strict moral rectitude but was also a shrewd man who knew the effectiveness of a shock tactic, “did you by any chance notice that young woman’s breasts?” He let out a loud guffaw, which Max, for the sake of Indo-American relations, felt the need to emulate. “National treasures,” he replied seriously, using much self-control to conceal his deeper feelings, but fearing that Swaran had noted the powerful involuntary reaction he had gone fishing for. “Integral parts of India,” he added, for good measure. This set Swaran Singh off again. “Ambassador,” the foreign minister chuckled, “I can see that with you as our guide, the new India will become more pro-West than ever before.”
When Peggy Ophuls, alone in the New York apartment, had answered her telephone and heard from one of her informants that Edgar Wood was slated for transfer to India her heart pounded and she threw the tall glass of Pellegrino she was holding as hard as she could in the general direction of ZOOMMM!!!!, the widescreen Lichtenstein portrait of her husband flying the Bugatti Racer which she had commissioned as a gift of love and which hung, when it was not being lent to this or that major gallery, on one long living-room wall in their capacious Riverside Drive home. Such was her agitation that the glass missed the large painting entirely and shattered on the white wall to the right of the unprotected canvas. She left the pieces where they fell, clenched both fists and controlled herself. Better the pimp you know, she told herself angrily. If Wood had been left behind in America her husband would certainly have found another little helper, and for a time Margaret wouldn’t have known who was setting up the action without which Max Ophuls apparently couldn’t live, and which she herself was, by this time, emphatically unwilling to provide. Neither Max nor Edgar had any idea that she knew all about them-that she knew everything-that she knew where all the bodies were-not buried-ha! aha!-what was the right word-yes! laid, that she knew in detail where all his damned damned damned bodies were well and truly laid, that she had made it her business to, that she was in a position to, that one of these days by God she would, that any woman in her situation-and she had killed a man once!-had a right to, to. To take her dashed revenge.
The seduction of Boonyi Kaul Noman-or, more accurately, the seduction of Max Ophuls by Boonyi-took time. Even for a man of Edgar Wood’s unusual aptitudes it was not easy to arrange a private meeting between the American ambassador and a married Kashmiri dancing girl. At the end of the Dachigam hunting lodge festivities Wood voiced the ambassador’s desire to thank personally all those who had given him such a delightful evening, and out they came in a crowd, the poets and santoor players, the actors and cooks. Max moved among them with an interpreter and the genuineness of his interest and concern touched everyone he spoke to. At one point, casually, as if it were not the point of the entire exercise, he turned to Boonyi and congratulated her on her artistry. “A talent like yours,” he said, “must surely seek to advance and develop itself.” The interpreter translated, and Boonyi, her eyes modestly downcast, felt a breeze on her cheek, as if a door were opening and the air of the outside world were being allowed to enter. She told herself, Patience is everything now. You must just fold your hands in your lap and wait for what will be.
“Ask her name,” Max Ophuls ordered the interpreter. “Boonyi,” the fellow answered. “She tells that it is her preferred, how to say it, her optioned name. Actually her given name is Bhoomi, the earth, but her friends are calling her by this Boonyi cognomen which, sir, is the beloved tree of Kashmir.” “I see,” said Max, “a name for outsiders and a pet name for her friends. Ask her then, Bhoomi the earth or Boonyi the beloved tree-as a dancer, in her career as a dancer, what is it she wants?” There was nothing personal in his voice or manner, no hint of impropriety. Her reply was similarly courteous, freighted with nothing, a neutral politeness. “Boonyi says first that she is Boonyi,” the interpreter translated, “and second that to please you is joy enough.” Max Ophuls saw Swaran Singh looking across the crowded room with a faint smile on his face, the most innocent of smiles, a gentle smile, quite devoid of guile.
Max moved away from Boonyi and didn’t look in her direction again all evening. However, he spoke at length to Abdullah Noman, asking carefully about economic conditions in the valley, learning about the decline of the fortunes of the bhand pather, expressing a fascination with their ancient hand-me-down skills which he did not have to fake. Soon enough, Abdullah took the bait, as Max had known he would. “He, Pachigam headman, sir, is saying it would be lifetime honor for him if one day you will grace his village,” the interpreter said. “It will be lifetime privilege for him to afford you full performances of traditional and modern plays and if interest is in you, also you may see how techniques et cetera are refined. Cooking too is there, wazwaan cooks are coming tonight from that place only.” Here Edgar Wood intervened, all haste and business. “The ambassador’s schedule does not presently permit…” Max patted his eager young aide on the arm. “Edgar, Edgar, we’re just chatting,” he said. “Who knows? Could be that some day even the American ambassador may have a moment to spare.”
After so successfully choreographed an encounter, Max Ophuls returned to Delhi, to the cool, sprawling New Formalist palazzo of decorated modernism encased in a mosaic grillwork of white stone where he now lived. He walked by its fountain-lined reflecting pool, and, like Boonyi Noman, waited. Edgar Wood quietly arranged for him to receive daily private lessons in Hindi and Kashmiri. The ambassador’s wife, meanwhile, was mostly absent from the ambassadorial residence. Transformed into her new persona of Peggy-Mata, mother of the motherless, she had embarked on a nonstop nationwide tour of Indian orphanages, and would occasionally send Max a note saying things like These children are so beautiful I just absolutely want to scoop a few of them up and bring them home. Her success in raising funds in America and Europe to improve conditions at orphanages all over India increased the couple’s popularity. “Perhaps we should regard Peggy-Mata as the real U.S. ambassador,” one newspaper editorial suggested, “and Mr. Ophuls as her charming and personable consort.” Next to the editorial was a large photograph of Peggy Ophuls standing beside a handsome young Catholic priest, Father Ambrose, and surrounded by smiling young girls from his orphanage, the Holy Love of India Evangalactic Girls’ Orphanage for Disabled & Destitute Street Girls in Mehrauli. “The dying in Calcutta have Mother Teresa,” Father Ambrose was reported to have said, “but for the living we have Peggy-Mata right here.”