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
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
