people must have divined by instinct, since he’s certainly never allowed them to see him naked.
This room is even barer than the one next to it. There is a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, the fan, the bed shrouded in dingy netting, a table beside it with a shelf underneath. On the top of the table is a whisky bottle, a siphon and a glass; on the shelf below lies the only book he ever reads, which can’t be seen very well because it is in the shadow cast by the tabletop black, it might be a bible, and is certainly a religious book of some kind with a gilt cross on the cover.
As he gazes at his reflection his big aristocratic nose seems to arch itself in arrogant complacency, as though he were lord of the earth. He does belong to a titled family, and if several people die first he will eventually become an earl. But this doesn’t seem to justify his assumption that he’s superior to everyone else alive and that everyone must give way to him.
Physically, he is quite impressive, in an overbearing fashion, flexing his powerful muscles that bulge and slide under the skin like bunches of snakes as he stretches his arms and bends several times to touch his toes. Even now, in the middle of the night, with the temperature at its lowest, this effort leaves his neck, arms and face thickly beaded with sweat; which, however, is quickly absorbed by the furry covering, quickly disappearing.
His big-nosed face glides over the mirror in profile as he stoops down, scrutinizing his legs, assuring himself that their muscular development is as satisfactory as that of his arms. He swings his weight from one foot to the other and pinches his calves, which are hard as iron. But, still not quite satisfied, he wants to see the whole of himself, and because he can’t is suddenly overcome by his usual grievance against the world, his haughty countenance taking on a petulant look it must often have worn when he was a spoilt little boy. Impulsively he slops whisky into the glass, not bothering to watch how much he pours out, and gulps it down without adding any water. As if the spirit took effect instantly, he at once goes into the deserted middle room, which is faintly lit by the light in the room he has just left.
Tough as he is, and stark naked, he feels uncomfortably hot and pauses by the window, scratching his sticky scrotum, wondering whether to make the effort of opening the screens. At the sound of a mosquito sailing past his ear he decides against this, clutching furiously at the insect; but when he opens his clenched fist nothing is there. His sense of grievance increased by the mosquito’s escape, he goes on and pushes through the panels into his wife’s room, which contains the only full-length mirror in the house.
There is total darkness and silence in here. Although this is only what he expects, he’s held up for a moment, stopping just inside the spring flaps of the door. His eyes quickly accommodate themselves to the blackness. He makes out the paler shadowy blur of the mosquito net over the bed, and, near it, something like a huge shining eye, which is the glint of the looking-glass on the wall. He calls the girl’s name, and, getting no answer, calls again, more loudly and aggressively, adding: ‘Come on — you can’t fool me! I know you’re only pretending to be asleep!’ Still there’s only silence, which seems more profound after his interruption.
He now feels both violent and slightly muzzy, which is the maximum effect alcohol has upon him. He is far from clear in his own mind whether it is his wife or the mirror he wants, and means to have, but, as both are in the same direction, he takes a step forward, at once colliding painfully with a chair. Bursting into floods of obscenity, he stands rubbing his shins. From the bed there is still no sound — there might be nobody in it.
This thought emerging from his muddled brain, he starts forward to investigate, having already forgotten the chair, into which he stumbles again.
‘You put that there on purpose to trip me up!’ he shouts accusingly and, as it happens, correctly. Then, gripping the chair in one hand, he swings it high in the air, and, without aiming precisely at anything, hurls it across the room. A tremendous crash follows, and then the prolonged tinkle of falling glass. The chair has crashed into the mirror and smashed it to smithereens, which sobers him up slightly. He feels a fugitive, remote guilt connected with the destruction of the glittering eye on the wall. Now that it’s gone, as no sign of life comes from the bed, there seems no reason to stay in the room any longer. He turns, feels his way out between the panels, crosses the central room, and retires into his own.
Except for an occasional deep barking boom, the frogs are now quiet outside. The night is more than half over, but it’s still as hot as a furnace, black and oppressive, as all the nights are. Its silence, which is no silence, but a pulsating of countless insects, is now and then disturbed by the cry of some unspecified animal, and punctuated more regularly by that batrachian booming.
Under the mosquito net the naked figure, with its fur-like covering, lies sprawled, flat on its back, legs splayed wide for coolness and the soles of the feet on view, black with dirt from the floor. Sleep has suddenly overtaken the man, whose head, just off the pillow, is tilted back, with the mouth half open. His hands lie loose and relaxed at his sides, having relinquished the objects they held when sleep, overwhelmed him. The glass has lodged in the grimy folds of the net, stained by the blood of endless intruders and now also by the dregs of whisky the glass contained. The book has fallen face down from his other hand, where he opened it at random and was overcome by sleep before he could read the words he wouldn’t have taken in anyhow. Cover upwards, the tarnished cross upside down, its thin pages are crumpled and folded in deep creases which will never come out.
The light, forgotten, burns on in the silent room, in the midst of the circling suicidal throng of creatures attracted to it.
7
Ever since sunrise the brain-fever birds have been c ailing out their perpetual question, and now the full power of the sun is relentlessly pouring down heat on the burnt-up land, which has hardly had time to cool off during the dark hours.
The girl stands at her window, looking over the marsh. This flat sea of swampy ground, covered with large fleshy leaves, extends to the very edge of the compound, separated from it only by a ramshackle fence, beyond which is a footpath, built up above the mud. She has watched, either on this path or the road, first, a silent, ghostly sunrise procession of yellow-robed priests with their black begging-bowls; then various groups of brown people with flowers behind their ears, bringing offerings to the giant sacred snake that lives in the tall forest trees, left standing when the land was cleared for building the house. (Though gigantic, this reptile is harmless, gorged on the birds and small animals presented to it, which it consumes alive, and is usually to be seen among the lower branches, its pallid length looped and dangling.) A party of little men from the hills has also trotted by, carrying loads of bananas to some distant market.
The last person to use the marsh path was a white man, quite young, wearing the regular tropical uniform of bush jacket and shorts, with the addition of soft leather mosquito boots. Every day he passes four times, coming from and going to his place of work. The girl has a fellow feeling for him because of his youth: he hasn’t been out here long enough to lose his fresh complexion; his face has not yet hardened out of its youthful sensitivity. Because of the distinctive item of his attire, she always thinks of him as ‘the man in suede boots,’ and knows he won’t appear again now before midday. But, paralysed by the heat, she still stands gazing out at a patch of black ooze between the bog plants, where iridescent shimmers reflect the sky. Probably it’s because she can’t get used to the climate that she feels so strange all the time, and can’t get used to her life in this country either.
She gives up the problem, and, in a gesture become automatic, raises both hands to lift the hair off her neck — the dampness of the flesh makes her aware of the sweltering heat (these upper rooms with their wooden walls are uninhabitable during the day, no better than ovens), and that it’s long past the time when she generally hears her husband drive off to his office, a fact she’s half consciously been ignoring. Deciding reluctantly to find out what’s happening, from force of habit she first picks up a comb, but immediately drops it as it is too hot to hold. Then she goes out between the wooden flaps, which spring back into place behind her.
In the second room, her eyes avoid the wardrobe made in the jail, and keep to the floor, which is covered in stains, almost as if she were looking for a special mark. This is how she suddenly finds herself about to collide with
