He arrived before the agent did, and was standing there, on the pavement, for fifteen minutes or so before the young man came round the corner. The agent was whistling, which surprised him, because one did not hear people whistling; there was something unexpected, something almost old-fashioned about it. And there was no bird song, of course, or very little. At home there had always been bird song, and one took it for granted. Here the mornings seemed silent; the air drained of sound. Thin air. Thin.

“Are you the doctor?” asked the young man, looking at a piece of paper extracted from his pocket. “You’re Dr ... Dr John. Right?”

He shook his head, and stopped and reminded himself that it was the other way round. In India one shook one’s head for yes, which was the opposite of what they did here. It was rather like water going this way round as it drained out of the bath in the southern hemisphere, and that way round in the north, or so people said. Clockwise or anti-clockwise. Widdershins and deasil. Those were wonderful words—widdershins and deasil—and he had written them down in his notebook of fine English words, as he had always done since he was a boy. He had had an uncle who had taught English at a college and had impressed upon him the importance of a wide vocabulary.

“The British left us a very big treasure when they went home from this place,” this uncle had said. “The greatest language that ever walked the face of the earth. Yes, I am quite happy to say that, even as a patriot. That fine language was left here and you can use it just the same as they can. It is not un-Indian to use English. That nationalist nonsense deprived a whole generation of English. Use it better. Use it better!”

And he had imitated his uncle’s habit of writing down interesting words in his notebook. Pejorative, he wrote. Gloaming. Conspicuous.

The young man smiled at him. “You’re Dr John Something, are you,” he said. “Or are you just Dr Something John? It’s not very clear on this paper, you see.”

“I am Dr John,” he said. And he was about to say, “That is my good name,” because that is what they said at home, but he stopped himself. One did not say good name here; one said surname, which was a strange word, like one of the words in his notebook. Surname.

“Oh,” said the young man. “I see.”

“Where I come from,” he said, “in my part of India there are many people called John. It is a name that Christian people use. There are many Johns and Thomases, after St Thomas. They are south Indian names, you see. Kerala.”
“India,” said the young man, and tucked the piece of paper back into his pocket.

He waited for him to say something more, but he did not, but gestured to the door, politely, and told him that the flat was on the second floor and that they should go in an take a look.

“After you,” said the young man. And he went in, into the dark hallway, which had a strange smell to it, like chalk, or stone that has been kept from the sun, like the stone of a cave. He was sensitive to smells—he always had been—and he associated smells with places, with particular corners, with particular times of day. Here, in this country, in this thin air, the smells seemed curiously attenuated. Back home there had been the smell of humanity, and the smell of the sea, of the port, that oily green smell that had wafted up into the town and beyond when the wind was in the right direction. And the smell of coal, and unrefined fuel oil, and the spices from the spice traders, and the rich, sticky smell of filth, just filth. But here there were just faint smells, or no smell at all, just air.

Upstairs, up the winding stone stairway with its iron balustrade and its polished mahogany handrail, he stood outside the dark blue door while the young man fumbled with the keys. And then they were inside, and the young man opened the shutters, that had been closed, and pointed out that from where they stood he might just see the Firth of Forth over the rooftops. There, did he see it? That strip of blue?

The young man smiled. “People like a view of the sea, you know. So I always try to see if we can see it from a window. It makes them happy.”

He returned the smile. “I do not like to be on the sea,” he said. “When the sea gets rough I get very sea-sick. I am not a good sailor.”

“I have never been in a boat,” said the young man, fingering a small blemish on his chin.

As a doctor, he wanted to say to the young man that he should not touch the spot, which could get infected. Fingers were such a source of infection, but most people did not understand that. As a student in Delhi he had remembered peering down his microscope and seeing the colonies of life that the laboratory demonstrator had obtained from a swab taken at random. All those organisms, he had thought, so small and yet so purposeful, so busy with their lives. If he had been a Jain, then what would he have thought? Did they think about the daily slaughter they committed when they washed their hands and sent whole cities, whole dynasties of these invisible organisms swirling down the drain; for them a flood, a biblical scourge.

“Well?” said the young man. “What do you think?”

“Of course,” he said. “It is very good. I will take this.”

The young man nodded. “Good choice.”

They went downstairs together and separated at the front door, after shaking hands. He watched the young man walk down the road. At the corner he turned round and waved.