"Then a pleasant surprise awaits you." Arangbar examined Hawksworth's cup and motioned for a servant to refill it. "Drink up, Inglish. The evening is only beginning."
Arangbar clapped drunkenly and the guests began to settle themselves around the bolsters that had been strewn about the carpet. An ornate silk pillow was provided for each man to rest against, and a number of large hookahs, each with several mouthpieces, were lighted and stationed about the room. The servants also distributed garlands of yellow flowers, and as Nadir Sharif took his place next to Hawksworth, he wrapped one of the garlands about his left wrist. With the other hand he set down his wineglass, still full, and signaled a servant to replenish Hawksworth's. Arangbar was reclining now on the throne, against his own bolster, and the oil lamps around the side of the room were lowered, leaving illumination only on the musicians and on a bare spot in the center of the carpet. The air was rich with the aroma of roses as servants passed shaking rosewater on the guests from long-necked silver decanters.
The musicians were completing their tuning, and Hawksworth noticed that now there were two drummers, a sitar player, and a new musician holding a sarangi. In the background another man sat methodically strumming a simple upright instrument, shaped like the sitar save it provided nothing more than a low-pitched droning, against which the other instruments had been tuned. Next a man entered, wearing a simple white shirt, and settled himself on the carpet in front of the musicians. As silence gripped the room, Arangbar signaled to the seated man with his wineglass and the man began to sing a low, soulful melody that seemed to consist of only a few syllables. "Ga, Ma, Pa." The voice soared upward. "Da, Ni, Sa." After a few moments Hawksworth guessed he must be singing the names of the notes in the Indian scale. They were virtually identical to the Western scale, except certain notes seemed to be a few microtones higher or lower, depending whether approached from ascent or descent.
The singer's voice soared slowly upward in pitch and volume, growing more intense as it quavered around certain of the high notes, while the sarangi player listened attentively and bowed the exact notes he sang, always seeming to guess which note he would find next. The song was melodic, and gradually what had at first seemed almost a dirge grew to be a poignant line of beauty.
Suddenly the singer's voice cut the air with a fast-tempo phrase, which was brief and immediately repeated, the second time to the accompaniment of the drum, as both players picked up the notes. On the third repetition of the phrase, the curtains on Arangbar's right were swept aside and a young woman seemed to fairly burst across the room, her every skipping step announced by a band of tiny bells bound around her ankles and across the tops of her bare feet.
As she spun into the light, she whirled a fast pirouette that sent her long braided pigtail—so long the end was attached to her waist—whistling in an arc behind her. Her flowered silk tunic flew outward from her spinning body, revealing all of her tight-fitting white trousers. She wore a crown of jewels, straight pendant earrings of emerald, and an inch- long string of diamonds dangled from the center of her nose.
She paused for an instant, whirled toward Arangbar, and performed a salaam with her right hand, fingers slightly bent, thumb across her palm as she raised her hand to her forehead. The movement was possessed of so much grace it seemed a perfect dance figure.
"May I take the liberty of interpreting for you, Ambassador?" Nadir Sharif ignored the hookah mouthpiece that another, slightly tipsy, guest was urging on him and slid closer to Hawksworth. "Kathak is an art, like painting or pigeon-flying, best appreciated when you know the rules." He pointed toward the dancer. "Her name is Sangeeta, and she has just performed the invocation. For the Hindus it is a salute to their elephant-headed god Ganesh. For Muslims, it is a salaam."
Next she turned slowly toward the guests and struck a pose, one foot crossed behind the other, arms bent as though holding a drawn bow. As the sarangi played a slow, tuneful melody, she seemed to control the rhythm of the drums by quietly stroking together again and again the thumb and forefinger of each hand. The explosive tension in her body seemed focused entirely in this single, virtually imperceptible motion, almost as a glass marshals the power of the sun to a tiny point. Then her eyes began to dart from side to side, and first one eyebrow and then the other lifted seductively. Gradually the rhythm was taken up by her head, as it began to glide from side to side in a subtle, elegant expression that seemed an extension of the music.
She had possessed the room almost as a spirit of pure dance, chaste, powerful, disciplined, and there was nothing of the overt suggestiveness of the nautch dancers of the Shahbandar's courtyard. She wore a low-cut, tight vest of brocade over a long-sleeved silk shirt, and of her body only her hands, feet, and face were visible. It was these, Hawksworth realized, not her body, that were the elements of Kathak dance.