Who Are You? (3 page)

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.

Is
it her life ? It hardly seems so. A picture comes to her of her schoolfriends, enjoying themselves in pretty dresses and gay surroundings, or else at the university, as she ought to be. Who
am
I? she wonders vaguely. Why am I here ? Is she the girl who won the scholarship last year? Or the girl living in this awful heat, with the stranger who's married her for some unknown reason, with whom it's impossible to communicate ? Her questions remain unanswered; both alternatives seem equally dreamlike, unreal. Somehow she seems to have lost contact with her existence . . .

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 a barefooted youth in a white turban, who is being trained as Mohammed's successor, and has just silently climbed the stairs with a jug of water. The normal course of his duties does not bring him up here at this hour, so she makes a perfunctory effort to assert herself by asking what he is doing.

The jug prevents him from putting his palms together in a formal salute, so he bends his head, making the obeisance as mechanically as he performs any trick he is taught — it seems no more a sign of respect than of any other feeling, or of none. 'Master, he has fever.' Devoid of expression, his big black eyes appear depthless, almost like those of an animal, as he gives the information with no trace of feeling.

All the servants look at her in this blank way that hides their feelings and thoughts—if they have any. This particular boy speaks good English, but arranges his sentences oddly, and announces all news, regardless of whether it's good or bad, in the same flat voice, as though the words have no meaning for him.

The girl precedes him now into the third room, which the sun hasn't reached yet, so that a very faint trace of the night's comparative coolness still lingers, combined with the stale smell of whisky. She stops just inside the door, astonished by her husband's sick face, which nevertheless contrives to look overbearing and extremely bad tempered, as he submits to the ministrations of Mohammed Dirwaza Khan, who is too preoccupied even to notice her arrival. In response to an order in his own language the youth puts down the jug, and departs precipitately. The bearded Moslem continues to pile blankets upon the bed; which so amazes the on-looker, who's never before witnessed an attack of malaria, that she allows some expression of incredulity, such as, 'In this heat . . . ?' to escape from her unawares.

The patient hears, and, struggling up to confront her, bares his teeth in a sort of snarling grimace.

‘Idiot ! Can't you see I'm freezing to death? ' His teeth are, in fact, chattering loudly, convulsive shudders shake through him, his grimacing mouth can hardly bring out the words: ‘Are you satisfied with what you've done ? This is all your fault . .’

‘Mine ?' She stares at him, horrified, almost believing he's really about to give up the ghost.

‘Yes,
yours!
Why did you have to let in all those mosquitoes ? I've told you a million times they carry infection.' Falling back exhausted, he mumbles: ‘You'd like to see the end of me, wouldn't you ?' ‘Oh, no !' She's suddenly shocked into feeling sorry for him – ‘didn't mean . . . didn't understand . . .' But then she falters into silence, not knowing what to say.

The man is not in the least placated. He heaves himself up again, exposing his whole torso, to which the furlike hair is now damply clinging. Cursing incomprehensibly, he tries to throw off the covers, but the effort proves too great, and he collapses again, exclaiming weakly: ‘Leave me alone ! You make me sick!'

The girl hesitates for a moment, torn between a desire to escape, a feeling of guilt, and a mixture of repugnance and pity for the speaker, on whose face great drops of sweat are now starting out.

'Better misses go now.' The servant's voice has no trace of emotion, he doesn't even look round, still stooping over the bed. His large blackish hand, with its paler pink palm and fingertips, grasps a clean folded handkerchief, with which he gently and efficiently wipes away the sweat on his master's face, while the latter gasps: 'Yes — get out . . . and stay out !'

A second longer she stands there unhappily, her feelings divided, listening to the monotonous voice murmuring soothingly as to a child as the big dark hands deftly smooth the blankets over the prostrate form, whose spasmodic shudders are still visible through the mass of bedclothes, accompanied by semi-delirious mutterings.

Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? Sudden and piercingly loud a brain-fever bird's cry sounds startlingly close, as if it were in the room, drowning all other sounds. Numerous birds all round the house call back the same question, and a whole explosion of identical cries breaks out on all sides at once.

The eternal Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? Who-are-you ? repeated from the tamarinds at the back, from the palm in front, from the trees where the snake lives, from the banana trees just outside, from the marsh, from the bushes screening the servants' quarters, and from further away, creates an exasperating din that seems as though it will really go on forever. The earsplitting, monotonous repetition continues like an infuriating machine-noise nobody knows how to stop.

All of a sudden the girl can't stand it; her clumsily cut hair swings forward abruptly as she covers her ears with her hands. The dreamlike reality in which she lives these days seems to be trembling on the brink of nightmare as she hurries out of the room, pushing open the wooden door-flaps with such force that they go on vibrating long after she's disappeared.

8

Mohammed Dirwaza Khan watches by day and by night. His main function is to watch over his master. His always watchful eyes and retentive memory observe and record all that takes place in the house and the compound. Fanatically jealous of the man's reputation, he defends him to the point of bloodshed against the slightest attack. A breath of criticism or even a joking remark can start a lifelong vendetta. His loyalty is blind, absolute; to the death he would serve his master, if necessary without payment. He lies, steals, intrigues, spies, bullies, fights, and possibly even murders for him; cares for him with endless unspoken devotion in health and sickness.

What happens to him when the other man goes on leave is a mystery. But, by some secret personal magic, he discovers the date and place of his return, and is there, waiting for him, at the airport or on the quayside, ready to welcome him back with a profound salaam. After which he resumes his duties as if there had been no year-long interruption. How he has lived through the interval nobody knows or cares. The one certainty is that he has served no other master, and never will.

The marriage of the man to whom he is dedicated could not have taken place within his sphere of vigilance — he would have prevented it. The accomplished fact he can only oppose by stealth, determined it shall not last. He regards the girl as an enemy and a rival, to be disposed of as soon as possible. Yet it has been clear from the start that she is no match for him, hardly worthy to be called an adversary, so totally does she lack all qualifications for holding her own against him, not even the weapon of love at her disposal.

He despises her deeply for her inability to adjust herself to the climate or to control the servants; for letting him keep his authority unchallenged; for being timid and, to his mind, unattractive and skinny; because she is not popular with the other white people, doesn't give elaborate parties or do anything to enhance his master's prestige. Etc. Etc. The list is endless.

He has worked against her secretly all along, cunningly undermining her in his master's mind; disparaging her
as
a housekeeper, as a hostess — even as a wife, though he only employs hints on this delicate, dangerous ground, and slyly disguises his abysmal contempt, which would seem to insult the other's powers of selection.