Who Are You? (6 page)

It's too hot to stay here, and she turns back to the house. The lizard is still calling, Gekko, as she goes in. She counts its cries mechanically. There are twelve more of them.

12

Suede Boots is here again for tea. He looks in every clay as he promised, and fancies he's falling a little in love with the girl, though not seriously enough to commit himself. Now and then, when he remembers his existence, he's faintly worried about the husband, who has recovered and is now back at work. He hears that he hasn't once mentioned him, and wonders whether he doesn't know about his daily visits. But that's impossible in this grapevine country, where each branch sprouts a crop of wide open ears — how extraordinary that he makes no comment. He tells himself the man must be simply indifferent, or perhaps even glad to have someone talk to his wife, so that he needn't bother. But as he never has bothered about her in the slightest the argument is not very convincing.

Marvellous to relate, nobody seems to have noticed his visits. And as few Europeans use the marsh path he deludes himself into believing they can escape observation indefinitely. Of course he's not ashamed of going to see the girl — quite the reverse. But he knows, once the secret is out, the two of them are bound to become targets for pernicious gossip; their innocent relationship will be smeared with all sorts of disgusting hints and rumours. In this climate, always seething with sex, the small white community is a hotbed of scandal. An intense interest is taken in each new affair that comes to light, which is endlessly discussed and reported, without much regard for truth. Some people, with too little to do and over-stimulated by the heat, seem to confuse reality with the sexual fantasies they embellish with obscene detail, and are apt to accuse others of indulging in their own perverse imaginings. He knows how hungrily they will pounce on the news, circulating it eagerly among themselves, distorted out of all recognition by their morbid fancies. He hates to think of his pure affection being so basely degraded, and can't bear the idea of the girl being victimized either, as she's so helpless and vulnerable.

However, his youthful optimism prevents him from being seriously troubled. He concentrates on enjoying the present, without too much concern for future eventualities. Things are going very well at the moment; the girl seems happier and more relaxed when he's with her, at any rate. Not being insensitive, he has become aware of her idea that she's doomed to perpetual bad luck, but feels sure he'll be able to make her outlook more cheerful.

For a start, he's already almost persuaded her that their friendship will be allowed to go on. If only he could spend more time with her. His visits are always far too short for all they have to talk about. They discuss everything under the sun, and also laugh a good deal she has so much lost laughter to make up for. But this afternoon, as it happens, the conversation is more serious, for she's just told him about the precious letter, and brought it downstairs to show him.

When the bearded spy, unsuspected, unseen, for a moment looks in at the window, he's puzzled by the sight of their two heads bent over the familiar worn sheet of notepaper, which doesn't seem to fit in very well with his love-letter theory.

In blissful ignorance of him and his machinations, Suede Boots tells her it certainly isn't too late to do as the letter writer suggests, and take up her scholarship at the university. Why should she stay out here, in this vile climate, tied to a man twice her age she ought never to have married, who neglects her, and whom she doesn't care twopence about ? He gets quite excited while he is talking, and is disappointed because at the end she says nothing. Her face is half hidden from him by her hair, which falls forward as she bends over the letter, carefully returning it to its envelope.

He always likes to look at her hair. She must have washed it today, as it is slightly ruffled and there seems more of it than usual. The straight, fair hair refuses to conform to the shape in which it's been clumsily cut, and strands keep on escaping. The fan stirs individual hairs on the surface, and their tiny movements, amplified by the mass of hair, create constantly changing eddies with shining highlights. But, attractive as it is in itself, the hair's perpetual motion accentuates its owner's unmoving silence, which begins to make him slightly impatient. He can't understand why she puts up with the situation, without even trying to change it, which he thinks she could easily do.

'All you've got to do is walk out and book your passage,' he tells her: and, as she still doesn't speak, adds impatiently: 'You're not in prison !' Still he waits in vain for her to say something, and finally bursts out: 'You've only got one life, you know ! Are you always going to let other people run it for you, as if you were six years old?'

Even now she can't think of an answer. She knows that however often he repeats that it's quite easy for her to get on a boat or a plane, the proposition will remain purely theoretical to her; it will never, for a single instant, appear as something she might actually
do.
She looks at him appealingly, as if to beg him not to be angry with her. She doesn't want to annoy him, but feels incapable of explaining how impossible it is for her to resume her old life where it was broken off. She'll never make him understand that an impassable barrier separates her from her past for him, impassable barriers don't exist. The only thing seems to be to put forward the obvious obstacle of having no money.

And this he immediately sweeps aside with the greatest of ease, disposing of it at once. He will pay her fare for her. She can pay him back any time. Or never. It doesn't matter. His parents are rich, it appears, and have only sent him out here for a year or so to toughen him up, and because of certain youthful escapades he refers to with a wry grimace, without going into details.

At last she now lifts her head, putting back her hair with one hand, and wonderingly looks him full in the face. No one has ever treated her generously before; she is touched and astonished by his generosity. She can't bear to seem ungrateful, and hasn't the heart to refuse his offer, although the project seems just as unreal as it did before. To please him, she promises to think it over, and meanwhile continues to look at him — her expression almost makes him get up and hug her.

Instead, he changes the subject, reverting to one they've already discussed several times, which involves a, question nearly as difficult for her to answer. He wants to take her out in his car for a picnic; they can drive down to the river, where there's generally a cool breeze, or go a little way into the jungle she's never seen. There's nothing in the world she'd like better. Yet whenever lie asks her to fix a day she always becomes evasive and puts him off, in spite of the fact that they could easily get back before her husband, who often works late at his office. He can't understand it — he would never guess her real reason in a thousand years.

It is that she has a superstitious desire to keep everything the same between them. Any innovation seems dangerous, a threat to her precarious present happiness. If it were possible, she'd like to go on forever re-living that first afternoon, having the same identical conversation ad infinitum. Though she won't admit it, at the back of her mind is a constant dread of some fatal nightmare moment when everything will have to stop. But this fear is too formless and too obscure to put into words, so she never mentions it to him.

'We'll have to go very soon, if we're ever going,' he now remarks, with fresh urgency. 'It's impossible to go anywhere once the rains break.'

With passing surprise, she perceives that even the frightful heat has become unimportant to her lately. But now that she thinks of the weather she feels the added oppressiveness in the air and a new undercurrent of tension, like electricity — almost like something about to explode. She's still searching for a reply that won't displease him when, to her relief, a brain-fever bird in the tamarinds calls out so loudly that she can't be expected to say anything till it stops.

Who-are-you? Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? echoes
another bird, in flight seemingly, the question getting louder and louder as it approaches; it flaps and flutters among the green clusters of the banana trees just outside, shouts, Who-are-you ? right into the room, then flies off again, still calling out at the top of its voice the question nobody ever answers, which is repeated by all the other brain-fever birds for miles around.

Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? The mounting volume of noise comes from both sides of the house, from the back, from the front, from the compound, the road, the swamp, the trees, from everywhere at once. Hundreds, thousands of birds are all shouting their heads off the girl's never heard them make such a racket. The frantic cries sound to her not only demented but threatening, so that she feels uneasy. Some of them seem to sound distinctly ominous. Yet she must imagine this, for, in reality, all the cries are exactly alike. All have the same infuriating, monotonous, unstoppable persistence; all sound equally mechanical, motiveless, not expressing anger, or fear, or love, or any - sort of avian feeling - their sole function seems to be
to drive people mad.

No human voice can compete with the din. The two under the fan have to sit helplessly, waiting for the row to subside. Suede Boots smiles, and she, disguising the uneasiness she can't get rid of, smiles back. Her hands have instinctively covered her ears, but she lowers them with the intention of asking if all the birds have gone suddenly crazy. At the same moment, however, she notices that he is no longer smiling.

He has already heard the new sound she is only just catching, which is also mechanical and monotonous and has the same inexorable persistence common to all machine-made noise, that goes on and on, indifferent to everything. It's not easy to follow the low hum, or rumble, through the delirious pandemonium of the birds' repetitive questions. Hardly has she recognized it as the sound of an approaching car than it stops

Everything stops with it. Or so it seems. The birds' (Ties, at any rate, are abruptly cut off, and it's impossible to tell whether they've been interrupted by the car, or whether their explosive outburst has come to its natural conclusion. In the sudden silence, the footsteps which can be heard steadily coming nearer sound unnaturally loud. Beating on the stone floor with the terrifying, inflexible regularity of a machine nobody can stop, they progress towards the door, the flaps of which fly apart to admit Mr Dog Head.

He stands a few paces away, staring at the pair. His cold, very bright blue eyes have a glint that seems not quite normal. His hat has left a red ring round his forehead; it might be the diadem of a prince to judge by his haughty, domineering expression. No one speaks or moves. All three of them seem held in suspense, as if mesmerized. Only the fan continues its lackadaisical circling, the high squeak it emits with each revolution now piercingly loud.

This of course is the moment the girl dreads, when everything will suddenly come to an end. Although her fear isn't fully conscious she feels she must make some kind of effort to save her happiness. She starts moving the teapot in front of her as if it were some heavy object, but doesn't manage to complete the gesture, which would be futile in any case. 'Will you have some tea ?' Her low voice travels a little way into the silence, but seems
to make no headway against it, and expires, leaving her mute and motionless as before.

Her husband takes no notice whatever of her. His blue eyes stare icily, fixedly, at the visitor, with disgust and abysmal contempt. His big aristocratic nose arches itself superciliously as he asks, ' What are
you
doing here ? ' as though he were asking: 'Why did
you
ever have to emerge from the primordial slime?’

Suede Boots, who's got up in confusion, stammers something, steps forward and holds out his hand, hardly knowing what he is doing the man's lordly, insulting behaviour, combined with the tension it's impossible to ignore, deprive him completely of his usual aplomb.

For a second, or for several seconds, these two confront one another. They are dressed alike. Both wear shorts, and a short-sleeved bush jacket which, with belt, numerous buttoned pockets and shoulder tabs has a vaguely military aspect. But while in one case this might be the uniform of a general, in the other it's more like a Boy Scout's. The wearer's young, bare, rounded knees look half pathetic, half comic; most unlike the tough, sinewy, hairy knees of his much taller senior, who is in every way far more formidable, in his arrogance and his gaunt, mature, muscular virility, beneath which can be felt a disturbing suggestion of something faintly unbalanced.

Suddenly, without warning, in sudden mad irritability, Dog Head lifts his clenched fist and brings it down with terrific force on the outstretched hand, knocking it away from him. 'Out !' he snaps, like a savage dog; the single-syllable command, and the accompanying jerk of the head, both express ultimate scorn.

The young man goes very red in the face, and, inarticulate with pain and rage, bursts into unintelligible indignation, looking more than ever like a furious little boy, almost on the verge of tears. He's like a sort of juvenile Jack the Giant Killer before his opponent. Except that it's obviously the giant who will do the killing in this case.

‘Out !' The command is snapped for the second time, with insufferable superiority. ‘Or are you waiting to be slung out by the scruff of your neck ?'

The young fellow's red face turns quite pale now, but he gamely assumes a fighting attitude, although it's only too evident to him that he hasn't a chance - not a hope in hell - against this lunatic, who will ‘wipe the floor
with him ', ‘make mincemeat of him ', etc.

But at the last moment, the girl saves the situation for him by crying, ‘Oh, no . . !' and hiding her face in her hands.

Whereupon, much relieved, he sensibly abandons his pugilistic stance, thankful for the chance to retire without being branded a coward. He pretends he is doing it for her sake, as he hurries out of the room, avoiding her with his eyes, and looking extremely uncomfortable as well as shamefaced.