He swims until he is exhausted; later he lies on the sand. The fierceness of the heat has gone now, this is a golden warmth – amiable and attentive, drying the last of the seawater from his hair and skin. This is the first time he has been alone for such a long period of time. Not lonely: that emotion is a familiar friend. One of the things the last few years has taught him is how lonely it is possible to be while surrounded by an entire regiment of men. This, his own company, feels like a luxury by comparison. It is a gift that he does not deserve – and he knows this. It is a selfishness. But he will not think of that now.
He takes the last remaining pinch of tobacco from his tin, rolls himself a rather meagre cigarette, and lies propped upon his elbows. His feet burrow deep in the sand to discover a cooler layer, untouched by the sun. The sun is warm upon his shoulders. He feels the brief, guiltless happiness of an animal.
His last thought, before he drifts into sleep, is that this is the gift she has given him.
When he next opens his eyes he has forgotten where he is. The light has changed; dusk is on the approach. He realises he has forgotten the ferry timetable he looked at by the quay, and isn’t absolutely certain when the last leaves. He will have to exert himself now, or risk spending the night here. As if to emphasise his predicament, he hears the inquisitive whine of a mosquito near his left ear. He swats it, but it or another returns within seconds. Soon there will be thousands. He has spent the whole of his war covering himself carefully from their attentions; the one time he did not he contracted malaria. He shrugs quickly into his clothes, wonders how he could have been so reckless. His tobacco tin lies open, empty upon the sand. He reaches for it and after a moment’s hesitation he uses it as a scoop, filling it with white grains and shells. There is no one here to see him but he feels sheepish all the same about this strange act, so unlike him. It is a sentimental act. In it he is imagining a future self that might one day open the tin and be returned to this place of warmth.
On the ferry back he sits sun-dazzled, slightly burned, chafed with salt and sand. A few feet away a little boy stands and tosses crumbs of bread into the air for the seagulls. George has never much liked them, but now he sees the majesty of their construction: the poise with which they ride the air, matching the speed of the ferry exactly. Then, with precise, hinged motions of the neck, snatching the morsels with what looks like an arrogant ease. The boy is delighted by them, hopping on the balls of his feet. He must be six or so, and very slight. He looks as though a too-strong gust of wind might snatch him up. George is half-ready to pitch forward and catch him. The sight of him is a mingled pain and joy.
Then the mother appears from the lower deck, in paroxysms of rage over the waste of the small crust of bread. George is somewhat relieved to be absolved from responsibility, to be able to look away.
As the ferry approaches the city a hush seems to descend over the passengers. Even those who have made this approach many, perhaps hundreds, of times seem awed by the sight. It does look particularly majestic at this hour, with the lights just beginning to come on. The final glow of the day seems to halo the skyline, surrounded by the encircling stain of dusk. He looks at it with eyes glutted with beauty.
The Prisoner
His thoughts have become fixated upon the boy. A pupil from his former days as a schoolteacher: an Armenian child, a figure who seems to have taken his own place in his sister’s affections, who now occupies – along with the English doctor – the house that was once his home. The boy is a representation of all that he has lost, intimately connected with his own misfortune. In some rational part of his mind, he knows that it is absurd. Yet he cannot help what he feels; a deep, violent hatred of this child who is a manifestation, a mockery, of his own fracture.
This hate gives him a kind of power. It provides the focus that his other pitiful attempts have lacked.
Now he begins to feel excitement. The very violence – the audacity – of his idea begins to thrill him even as it frightens him. It is like something growing inside him. One thing that the years of imprisonment gave him: a peculiar focus, an intensity of thought. When a person’s surroundings are so unvaryingly bleak, the inner world gains a new richness and texture in compensation. In certain circumstances it can become more real than that outside. At times he can summon the fact of it so vividly to himself that he believes it has already happened, that the power of his own thoughts has been enough to effect it. He wakes soaked in sweat, his heart hammering in triumph and fear.
This idea is shaped by his experience. In particular, by that cold that on so many occasions almost conquered him – no coincidence, then, that his thoughts should tend in this particular direction. An element in which things are fundamentally changed. An element in which, if one
