the stinging pain which had followed upon the initial encounter with the scorpion had all but disappeared. When she rose to leave, she found that it was perfectly possible to put her full weight on her left foot without feeling much discomfort, and her walk back to her own house was a proper walk rather than a hirple.
Ling was waiting for her on the veranda, seated on the planter’s chair, a paperback book on his lap. Domenica did not see him until she had mounted the steps, and she gave a start when he rose to his feet to greet her.
“You frightened me,” she said, “sitting there in the shadows.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I saw you go across to Mrs Choo’s house, and so I thought that I would just wait for you.” He paused, and looked at her foot. “You were limping. I was worried that you had hurt yourself.”
Domenica explained about the scorpion, and Ling bared his feet in sympathy and shared discomfort. “If you see another scorpion,” he said, “you must ring this bell. You see, I have brought you a bell.”
He fished into the pocket of the tunic top he was wearing and extracted a small brass bell. As he gave it to Domenica, he shook it and a penetrating, surprisingly loud sound rang out.
“If I hear that sound,” he said, “then I shall come running over from my place.”
222
Domenica thanked him and took the bell. “I shall only use it in a dire emergency,” she said. “Only then.”
Ling nodded. “If the Belgian had had a bell . . . “ He tailed off, as if he had suddenly remembered that this was a subject that was not to be talked about. But Domenica had heard.
“This Belgian,” she said quickly. “The anthropologist. Mrs Choo said to me . . .”
She did not have the chance to finish the sentence. “Now then,”
said Ling firmly, “we have much to do. Or rather, you have much to do.” He looked about him. “Do you wish me to interpret?”
Domenica shrugged. “Well, I’ll need to meet people,” she said. “I’ve only spoken to Mrs Choo so far, and that was just a general conversation.”
“Mrs Choo is not always accurate,” said Ling, his voice lowered, as if Mrs Choo herself might hear. “She means well, but she is not an accurate person.”
Domenica said nothing. If one was using an interpreter in an anthropological study, it was important that the translation be scrupulously correct. There was nothing worse than an interpreter who had his or her own view of what was what, and this, she feared, might be the case with Ling.
“It’s very kind of you to be concerned about accuracy,” she said gently. “But the important thing for me is that I hear exactly what people say. It doesn’t matter if you think that they are wrong about something. I can work that out later. All I want to hear is what they say.”
Ling frowned. “But what if they’re telling lies?” he asked.
“What if I know that what they are saying is just wrong? I cannot stand by and let people deceive you.”
For a moment Domenica said nothing. This was going to be difficult, she feared, and a measure of tact was required. “Well, how about this, Ling?” she said. “You can tell me exactly what somebody says. Then, afterwards, you can tell me what you think they should have said. In that way we can keep the two things separate.”
Ling smiled. “That is a very good idea,” he said. “You can hear what the vulgar people say first; then you can get the truth from me.”
Domenica nodded enthusiastically. But she had noted, again, the use of the term “vulgar people”, the expression used by Mrs Choo earlier, when they had discussed orchids. This was obviously a literal translation from the local Chinese dialect. Unless, of course, Ling thought that the people of the village were truly vulgar. That was always a possibility.
“Tell me, Ling,” she said. “What do you think of these local people?”
“I despise them, of course,” he said evenly, as if that were the only possible answer. “Why do you ask?”
Domenica left it at that. She had talked enough that morning, and she told Ling that she would like to take a small walk around the village, just by herself, to get her bearings. He left her then, and after a refreshing drink of fruit juice, she set off for a stroll round the periphery of the village. After a while, she came to a path, and she followed this, assuming that it would lead to the sea.
Halfway down the path there was a small clearing off to one side, and in this clearing there was a large, solitary tree. Domenica hesitated. It was very still, and she felt vaguely uneasy, as if she were somewhere she should not be. She looked about her. On either side of her, the jungle rose, a high green wall, lush and impenetrable. One could not see far into that, she thought, and if one could, what would one see? She turned, and stared at the tree in its clearing. She had noticed something under it – a marker of some sort – and she went to investigate. It was a grave, a simple, untended grave, at the head of which a small board had been placed on a stake and fixed into the ground.
She bent to read the inscription on the wooden board. HERE
LIES AN ANT, it said.
“My goodness, Bertie!” said Irene. “Your little diary is very full these days. Let’s think of what we have. In fact, let’s play a little 224
game. Mummy will list the things you have to do in Italian, and you can translate. How about that?”
Bertie, sitting at the kitchen table in the Pollock flat in Scotland Street, his legs not quite reaching the floor yet, sighed.
“If you want to, Mummy.”
“
