to his family about her, so that she can stay with them, as she’s got nobody to take care of her over there.
She is touched when she hears this gratitude overwhelms her. She’s never known so much kindness existed in life. Carried away by his enthusiasm she eagerly discusses her future with him. They make up all sorts of different plans, each leading to a fresh favourable outcome. For the possibilities seem endless, each more glowing than the last. So that she gets quite excited about them; excitement perhaps goes to her head a little.
But as soon as her excitement dies down, the whole project begins to seem unreal. She can’t believe it will ever come off. Things don’t happen like that in her case — they always go wrong.
‘It’s just a fairy tale you’ve made up about me — it can’t possibly come true.’ Thus she demolishes all the plans they have been constructing together. It’s no good inventing a happy future for her, since she’s always been unlucky, and always will be.
Silence falls after this. The young man is disappointed; but he won’t give up, and is now thinking how he can persuade her to take a more optimistic view. She has told him she’d like to live through their original meeting all over again, so he asks if she remembers their conversation then. ‘We said that if I hadn’t killed the snake on that particular day, and you hadn’t happened to see me, everything would have been quite different.’ He sees her looking at him with interest, and is encouraged to go on. ‘I wouldn’t be here with you now. This wouldn’t be real something else would. You’d have been another you, instead of the one you are now. You can’t be tied down to a predestined fate when you change according to your situation, and your fate must change too. Everything depends on circumstances — on which “you” you happen to be at a given time…’
Interrupting exactly as if it wanted to join in, a brain-fever bird just outside starts shouting, Who-are-you? so loudly that no human voice can compete with it. He can only wait for it to stop. They smile at each other, sitting helplessly, while the monotonous, everlasting question is taken up by all the brain-fever birds for miles around. The girl can’t even think about what he’s been saying — though it sounded reasonable, she has a vague idea there’s a flaw in the argument somewhere. But she can’t detect it with this row going on — she’s never heard the birds make such a din.
Loud, flat and persistent, the repetitious cries come from all distances and directions, filling the room, the house, the whole afternoon with their exasperating sound, which expresses no normal bird-feeling, but seems only meant to drive people mad. Like mad machines nobody can stop, the birds go on and on. Their deafening chorus hammers upon her nerves until she’s half dazed.
This no doubt explains why she’s slower than her companion to hear the new mechanical noise he heard several seconds ago — she becomes aware of it first when she sees that the smile’s disappeared from his face. Now she strains her ears to follow the low continuous hum or buzz through the birds’ commotion, and has barely identified it as the noise of a car when it stops abruptly.
Everything else seems to stop with it. The bird-calls abruptly break off. In the ensuing silence, footsteps are heard approaching, loud, heavy, regular as machinery. The door flaps fly open to admit Mr Dog Head, who doesn’t speak but stands staring at the pair, a curious blend of indignation, contempt and triumph on his arrogant features. He’s delighted to have caught his wife in the act — of what, he doesn’t trouble to think, but tells himself that now he really has something to blame her for. For the moment, however, he concentrates his offensive gaze on the visitor, who gets up in confusion and holds out his hand.
Dog Head looks down his supercilious nose at him in amazed contempt, as much as to say, ‘Good God! Surely this scum of the earth doesn’t expect me to touch him’ — he’d never dream of contaminating his lordly self in this way! But aloud he says nothing, merely continuing to glare at the hand, until its owner withdraws it, muttering something incomprehensible in his indignation at the silent insolence of the man’s behaviour who the hell does he think he is, standing there as if he expected people to fall down and worship him?
Restraining his anger, the guest decides that the most dignified course is to shame him by his own politeness, and says: ‘I’m glad we’ve met finally; I’ve always missed you before. Our office hours must be different.’
Not a word comes in response to this. A lengthy pause follows, and then he goes on, although the other has shown not the slightest interest, ‘We have to start early, but then we get off early too,’ embarking on a rather detailed account of his work schedule, which would be more appropriate if he’d been questioned about it. Not a single inquiry is made, and no comment either. The man he’s talking to simply goes on staring at him with the same contemptuous arrogance; until his personal servant brings in a fresh pot of tea, and he sits down and pours himself a cup, taking no more notice of Suede Boots than if he were a fly buzzing round the ceiling. Apparently he doesn’t hear a word he is saying, not even glancing at him now, his overbearing countenance fixed in stony disdainful indifference, as if he’d been petrified with this expression.
Catching sight of his face, the young fellow suddenly interrupts himself, his own face turning scarlet. He looks like a furious little boy, but chokes back the angry words on his lips and turns to the girl instead, saying, ‘Well, I’ll be off now.’ He smiles at her with a cheerfulness he is far from feeling, then hurries out, the smile changing to a grimace as soon as he turns his back.
Humiliated, enraged and embarrassed, he leaves the house as fast as he can. Something makes him glance back at it over his shoulder while crossing the compound, and he sees a tall, gaunt bearded figure posted outside the door like a sentry, watching him off the premises. The same grimace, openly furious now, crosses his face. Soon he is out of sight.
The squeak of the fan gets louder and louder in the room where husband and wife have been left alone. The man has turned all his anger against her now. But she’s only thinking about the sudden end of her happiness, which she has always feared she seems to have known all along that things would end like this. Despair has fallen upon her. She hardly cares what happens. Of course there’s bound to be an appalling row. She waits almost indifferently for it to begin. She’s disgusted by her husband’s rudeness to her friend and repelled by him when she catches a glimpse accidentally of his staring blue eyes, like a pair of marbles in his tanned face. The red ring his hat has left round his forehead might be a royal symbol, judging by his high and mighty expression. She can’t stand this assumption of superiority after the way he’s been behaving, and instinctively picks up a book and pretends to read, so that she needn’t see him.
Naturally, this enrages him even more. ‘What were you doing alone with that young whippersnapper?’ he asks in a bullying tone.
‘Now it’s coming,’ she thinks helplessly. But she says nothing. What’s the use of talking to him?
‘Answer me!’ He jumps up and stands over her, his fist coming down in a nerve-shattering thump on the table, making the cups jump and rattle and slop the dregs of cold tea into their saucers.
The agonizing squeak of the fan seems to be trying in vain to drown the noise of his heavy breathing. She knows the superior look she can’t stand must be on his face, so she doesn’t look up or see how strangely his eyes are glittering. We were having tea.’ She can hardly bring herself to answer him, and speaks the words with difficulty.
But to the hearer her low voice sounds indifferent. It certainly isn’t apologetic this and the way she refuses to look at him drives him nearly frantic. ‘What sort of a bloody fool do you take me for?’ he explodes. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know you’ve been seeing him every day?’
Is she really expected to answer this? It seems too idiotic. Although she still hasn’t raised her head she’s aware all the time of him looming over her menacingly, and feels somewhat apprehensive. She wouldn’t mind if he’d kill her outright, but is afraid he may beat her up. At the same time, he seems quite insignificant — her friendship with Suede Boots is responsible for the new and more critical attitude she adopts towards him. He seems like some base object, repulsive and disgusting, with his incredible arrogance where in the world did he get this grotesquely high opinion of himself? Let him do the quarrelling she’s not going to argue. Overwhelmed by the utter futility of saying anything to him, since he neither listens nor understands, she simply remains silent.
The man thinks she’s provoking him intentionally trying to drive him out of his mind — by not apologizing or even speaking. The glint in his eyes can’t be described as normal, as he shouts at her: ‘He’s not to come into the house again ever! Do you hear?’ She still doesn’t open her mouth even now, and he seizes her by the shoulders and shakes her violently to and fro, as if to shake it open, but only succeeds in shaking the book out of her hand. ‘I won’t have him walking past the compound either — if he does, I’ll set the chuprassi on him!’ Hardly knowing what he’s saying he adds a few more abusive, threatening phrases at random, while continuing to shake her furiously.
But after a moment he begins to feel baffled, deflated. He can’t go on shaking her forever, and he has no idea what else to do. He can’t discover any way of forcing his will upon her. It’s absolutely maddening to be so frustrated: but there seems to be nothing he can do about it. The next thing is that he has to let her go.
