4
Waited upon by the disapproving servant, the husband is eating his dinner in the dining-room. The girl has stayed on the roof where it’s cooler. It’s not unusual these days for the meal to be served and eaten without her. Since the hot weather started she has no appetite. She has not been long in the country, and her constitution is not yet adjusted to the torrid, unhealthy climate. Besides, the pair have nothing in common; although they have only been married a year, neither enjoys the company of the other.
The man has a curious inborn conviction of his own superiority which is quite unshakeable. All his life he has bullied and browbeaten those around him by his high-and-mightiness and his atrocious temper. As a boy he terrorized his entire family by his tantrums, when, if thwarted, he would throw himself on the floor and yell till he went blue in the face. It has been much the same ever since. Everyone’s terrified of his rages. He has only to start grinding his teeth, and people fall flat before him.
His wife is the only one who doesn’t seem to succumb, which of course annoys him. Besides, he has other things against her: such as her not being a social success, and her inability to run the house efficiently. Actually, she’s as out of sympathy with domestic and social affairs as he is with intellectual pursuits, and scarcely attempts to control their numerous servants of different races. Some of these have been in the master’s service before his marriage and resent her presence, putting the others against her and deliberately making her inefficiency more obvious.
The man in the dining-room is aware of all this, as he is of the significance of the fact that his dinner is being served, not by the butler who must have been forced to give up his place, but by his own personal boy. The severely ascetic grey-bearded Mohammedan has been with him ever since he first came out here as a junior. Of course his position now is much higher, but he has a perpetual grievance because it’s not higher still, and considers that he’s unfairly treated, passed over instead of promoted, unaware of the extent to which arrogance and bad temper prejudice his advancement.
His boy occupies a privileged place in the household, not only because he’s been with him longer than anyone, but also because waiting upon his person implies a certain intimacy, as his presence now indicates. He knows all is not well between his master and the young wife, whose neglect of her domestic duties on which his comfort depends is typified by her leaving the windows open, so that the house is full of mosquitoes. It is to show his sympathy, and his wish to atone for her deficiencies, that he is in attendance so anyway he wants the other man to believe wearing his huge, heavy, elaborately wound turban, instead of taking his ease and enjoying the ministrations of his own properly subservient wife.
It is true that the master relies upon him, perhaps more than he knows. He would prefer to employ only Mohammedans, regarding them as more trustworthy than the local people, and only does not do so because government policy is against such discrimination. He dislikes the volatile inhabitants of the country, seeing them as irresponsible and amoral, their natural gaiety offensive to his puritanism. He is always at pains to be scrupulously fair in his dealings with them, but his attitude makes itself felt, and arouses hostility. However, as the natives are lighthearted and not much interested in the white people, their antagonism is expressed mainly in the form of mockery and they have named him Mr Dog Head — one doesn’t at once see why.
Aggressive and overbearing physically as well as by nature, his arrogance makes him look taller than he really is, lean, muscular, tough and bony, with bright blue eyes that can flare up like rockets. The reddish tinge of his close-cut hair has been lightened by exposure to the tropical sun, and it clings to his skull like short fur. Without being exceptionally hairy, his arms share this close pelt, which appears to cover his whole body. Although he wears neither tie nor jacket, his shirt is immaculate, and he has changed for dinner into white trousers, instead of the shorts he wears during the day.
He eats fast, like someone who has to catch a train. Of course he conveys the food to his mouth silently and in the orthodox way; yet his jaws seem to close with a snap, he is already busily collecting the next mouthful with his knife and fork while still masticating the last. Nevertheless, it would be distinctly far-fetched to say there was any resemblance to a hungry dog in the eagerness with which he consumes whatever is on his plate, leaving it perfectly clean.
Mosquitoes are starting to penetrate into the room. It’s impossible to keep them out as there are no doors, only wooden panels fixed to the door frame, so that air can circulate freely. Mohammed Dirwaza Khan has stationed a couple of boys outside with orders to hold up a net from wall to wall. But their arms are aching, they feel they’ve been most unfairly conscripted for this extra job, and they begin muttering rebelliously in voices that reach the diner’s sharp ears.
He catches the eye of his servant, who is already moving to clout them into obedience, and just perceptibly shakes his head. He has finished. Pushing away his plate he stands up, ignoring the pink confection served for dessert as a traditional concession to the supposed sweet-tooth of his wife he never touches it. On the way out he smiles at the Mohammedan, briefly showing his teeth; large, white and strong, they suggest a wolf more than a dog.
Throughout the meal he’s said not a word to the man. Since he still doesn’t speak and only smiles at him in passing, it’s hard to say why he now seems to show more than the normal goodwill towards him almost familiarity — or how his smile exceeds the permissible, or fails to comply with conventional standards of conduct, or appears indiscreet.
The recipient of the smile notes the slight excess if that’s what it is — with gratification. It accentuates the perfection of
All the same, he is satisfied that his leisure has not been sacrificed in vain. And in future he will be more of a tyrant to the rest of the staff, because of the strengthened solidarity he feels with the man who has just left him.
5
The upper floor of the house is divided into three: a middle room into which the stairs lead, and a bedroom on each side. The bedrooms too are without doors, each door frame provided with two wooden panels which spring back into place after being pushed apart, a foot or two of vacancy above and below.
The central porch with its flat roof is reached by long windows from the middle room, which contains some cheap cane furniture and a larger piece that seems to have overflowed from one of the bedrooms. This is a wardrobe, made in the local jail, out of some dark reddish wood which always feels slightly sticky to the touch. Bottles, glasses and siphon stand on a table. In the middle of the ceiling a big fan circulates sluggishly, stirring up the hot air.
The wire screens are now closed over the windows and seem to exclude any coolness there might be outside. Yet the girl sits as close as possible to one of the windows, straining her eyes to read by the inadequate light from a bulb dangling far above; she can’t bear to switch on the table lamp, which gives out more heat than light.
Mr Dog Head, a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and a wire fly-swatter in the other, prowls round the walls, methodically exterminating mosquitoes. There are so many of them that their high whine is audible above the whirring of the fan and the sound of his movements.
He realizes that he’ll never be able to kill them all and suddenly becomes exasperated, though not so much by the mosquitoes as by the girl’s silence and immobility, and by the way she’s taking no notice of him. It always irritates him to see her sitting about reading; that she should go on even when he’s in the room seems a deliberate insult. His lordliness affronted by her lack of attention, he makes a wild swipe, simultaneously muttering something like, ‘It’s really too much…’ which he alters to an accusing: ‘Is it too much to ask you to keep the screens shut?’ gazing accusingly at her.
To his wife, there seems no point in answering. She feels that it’s utterly futile to try to talk to him. She might as well talk to the wall, for all the possibility of communication between them. She keeps her eyes fixed on her book
