Who Are You?

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.

As if materialized by the order, ‘Go and make sure he is off the premises,’ Mohammed Dirwaza Khan receives the command with a bow, and immediately glides out in silent pursuit of the departing guest.

Husband and wife are now left alone. The latter hasn’t moved, and remains in the same position, her face hidden, while the fan’s squeak reaches a maddening climax, rasping the nerves. Owing to the defective mechanism, the high, shrill screech is repeated at slightly irregular intervals, and these marginal variations are unpredictable, and as agonizing as Chinese water torture.

The girl’s silence is unendurable to the man, who now comes forward and stops in front of her, his eyes flaring crazily. As she still doesn’t speak or look up, he seizes her shoulders, and roughly shakes her backwards and forwards to force her to attend to him.

‘Are you listening to me?’ — even now he’s not certain That piddling pup isn’t to come into this house again — ever! Do you understand?’

Even this doesn’t make her open her mouth. And when, after a minute, he lets her go, she at once returns to her former pose, with her face in her hands. The only difference is that his rough handling has further disarranged the untidy hair, which now falls over her hands and wrists in such a way as to leave the back of her neck uncovered. More of the pale shiny mass of hair is exposed to the draught of the fan, loose strands of it thrust themselves out like tentacles in different directions, the many separate hairs on the surface weave in and out of each other continually, producing unexpected tremors and eddies, surrounding her bowed head with a misty effect, as ceaselessly circling insects surround a lamp.

The man is in a black rage, scowling, and compressing his lips till they disappear in a thin line, clenching and unclenching his hands convulsively. Convinced she’s deliberately taunting him, he takes her silence as a challenge to his inborn supremacy, which is intolerable. Nor can he endure this frustration — why can’t he make her speak?

As he stands there, looking down at her, baffled, very slowly a faint tinge of doubt invades his furious, overbearing expression. He has no idea what to do next.

The quinine, already buzzing inside his head, blends with the squeal of the fan in a fiendish disharmony, increasing his rage and frustration to an insufferable degree of intensity. The lightly stirring hairs he is staring at seem to dissolve in mist… through which all he sees is the nape of her neck, pale and sprinkled all over with small, faintly glistening beads, stretched out before him like that of a victim waiting for execution…

Such a murderous frenzy of violence surges through him that, shocked by it, he turns away blindly, and hurries out of the room.

13

As soon as the Suede Boots episode ends, it seems never to have happened. It’s almost as though there has never been any such person, as he no longer passes the house, preferring to make a lengthy detour, that must waste a lot of his time.

Dog Head has satisfactorily intimidated him. It’s his wife he doesn’t seem able to master. She never even says she’s sorry — not a word of apology does she utter. He doesn’t suspect her of a serious affair, but imagines people are laughing at him, which makes him mad. It’s outrageous that she should dare to humiliate him like this. Somehow he simply must get his own back.

Officially the subject is closed. He doesn’t refer to it any more. All goes on as before. But, though outwardly he is the same as ever, underneath he seems to be changing. Always now there’s that indefinable hint about him of something queer, almost like a touch of madness. A mad frenzy of resentment against her has got into him, which increases as the days pass. The atmosphere is changing too, in the house and outside. Every day the heat grows more intolerable; a weird undercurrent of electrical tension builds up… an uncanny excitement… as in a dream that has moved imperceptibly into nightmare…

He doesn’t want to be with his wife, everything about her gets on his nerves, and yet he can’t leave her alone. If he asks her to ride or play tennis with him, she always refuses. It exasperates him beyond words to see her mooning about aimlessly, or sitting for hours with her nose stuck in a book. If she’s too lazy to take healthy