Guerrillas

16

THE OLD truck ahead, its untrue double tires hissing on the soft tar, was carrying a load of river sand. The sand was wet and dripping, but the truck left no water trail on the road. The broken trickles of brownish water, whipped about by the truck’s speed, and evaporating in the afternoon heat, vanished as soon as they touched the asphalt.

Jane was in a taxi. The taxi was a large American car past its prime, its pieces no longer absolutely fitting together. In spite of its size it gave little protection against glare and heat. Hot air and exhaust fumes came through the windows, and the sun struck through on the driver’s side, scorching the plastic seat cover.

The truck went past the turning that led, through young sugar cane, to the airport. The taxi continued to follow the truck: the airport was not Jane’s destination. Presently, a bare and dusty black arm signaling, the truck turned off into a factory yard. Some miles later, the traffic less regular, the area of factories left behind, the taxi turned off the highway. And Jane saw the landscape she thought she would never see again: the rough narrow road, broken here and there, overgrown at the edges, the flattened scorched areas, the rows of brick pillars, still looking new, but stripped of their timber superstructures and hung with dried-out creepers, the distant wall of bush.

The taxi stopped at the house. Bougainvillaea and hibiscus were bright in the burnt garden.

Jane said to the driver, “Can you wait? I won’t be long.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, half an hour.”

“Better you telephone the office when you ready.”

She paid him and went through the open gate. He turned in the gateway, the big car dislodging a light rubble of stray pebbles, the tires crushing to ocher powder little clods of dry earth blown there by the wind; and he went back the way they had come.

No one had appeared at the sound of the car. The car port was empty, the oil stains on the concrete floor dry and dusted over. The front door was closed; Jane had remembered it open. The shallow terrazzo steps and the porch, already slanted with sunlight, were gritty, unswept.

Before she could knock, Jimmy opened the door. He held it open, and for a second or so he appeared not to see her: he was looking over her shoulder. He was as she had first seen him that day at Thrushcross Grange, when, after walking bare-chested down the aisle between the iron beds, he had put on the drab-colored Mao shirt. He was wearing that shirt now; his plump cheeks were as coarse from close shaving as they had been then, his full mouth as seemingly clamped shut below the mustache, his eyes as blank and assessing.

He said, after that little silence, “Jane. You made it, then?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I’m not surprised.”

She passed into the room, and he locked the door behind her. The room felt airless, though the barred windows were open. And she saw disorder: she saw he had not prepared the house for her visit. Disorder emphasized the cheapness of the furniture, its impermanence in that room: it no longer gave delight. There were newspapers on the furry upholstered chairs, and cups and plates and tins and sticky marks on the dining table. The electric-blue carpet, loose on the terrazzo, curled at the edges: the floor could easily be imagined without it. There was dust on the glass-topped table, and a confusion of papers, writing pads and blue air-letters on the desk.

She sat down in the upholstered chair next to the glass-topped table. The synthetic furry fabric was warm. She remembered to stroke it: it was as tickling smooth as she had remembered.

Jimmy said, “Make yourself at home. Can I get you anything? No rum punch. That’s your drink, isn’t it?”

“It’s too hot for that. I’ll just have a glass of water.”

He went out to the kitchen, and from that room, which she had seen once, he said, “Supplies are running low, Jane.”

Hot air came through the windows. The sky was pale blue.

He came out and handed her a glass of water, without ice. The glass was wet on the outside; his hand was wet. He sat at the desk.

“Well, Jane. What can I do for you?”

She was taking the wet glass to her lips. But she saw that it was stained, with dark brown trickles, and she just held the glass a little way from her mouth. She said, “I’m leaving.”

“You told me on the telephone. You’re going back to London. And massa?”

“I suppose Peter’s leaving too.” She put the glass down on the glass-topped table. “But I don’t know about him.”

“So in a few days you’ll be back. In a few days you will be watching television. BBC and ITV. And listening to the radio in the mornings. Today.”

Don’t remind me. I can see it all so clearly. It makes my heart sink.”

“Does it?”

“Is there anything I can do for you? Is there something you want that I can get? Can I see anyone?”

“What will you tell them?”

“I will tell them that I’ve seen you.”

“Is that all you’ll tell them?”

She avoided his eyes. After a while she said, “Will you stay here?”

“Jane, do you know why you came?”

She didn’t answer.

“You came because you’re going away. That’s why you came. If you were staying you wouldn’t have come. You’ve caused me so much pain, Jane.”

“I don’t see how I’ve caused you pain.”

“I’m not asking for sympathy, Jane. You mustn’t think that. What would be the point? You know the score as well as anybody.”

She was unwilling to let the question go. “How have I caused you pain?”

He said, in another tone, “You’re wearing your Moroccan necklaces.”

She put her hand to them and then let them fall back on the overtanned, coarsened skin in the opening of the blouse.

Jimmy said, “The ones given you by a lover.”

She gave the smile with which she acknowledged her exaggerations, mischievousness, or untruths.

“He didn’t want money to come between you.”

“Jimmy, are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you? Isn’t there something you’d like me to take for your children?”

“You wouldn’t be welcome there. You’ve caused me a lot of pain, Jane. You mustn’t make it worse.”

He broke off, making a sign to her with his open hand, raised his head and turned it to one side. A breath of warm air made the curtains move and disturbed the dust in the room. Jane listened with him and heard, far away, the rustle of the bush, a sound so steady it was like part of the silence.

He said, “And now you’re leaving.” But he was still listening. Then, abruptly, he relaxed and looked at her. “I like those necklaces.”

She held the three pendants together between her thumb and forefinger, flicked them stiffly up, then down.

He said, “I remember them.”

She let the pendants fall again on that part of her skin that had aged from too much sun. She said, “They’re quite worthless.”

“That was what you said. I suppose I like them because I see them on you. Why did you wear them today?”

“I didn’t really think about it.”

“You didn’t think about it, Jane? But you were coming to see me. I remember them very well. I’ve remembered everything about you. And now you’re leaving. Does massa know you’re here?”

“I told Peter I was coming to see you.”

“Did he tell you to tell me anything?”

“Should he have?”

“He’s very worried about you, Jane. He’s coming here. Did you know that? He said there was something he wanted to see me about. That’s a good laugh for a hot day. Massa isn’t going to let you go, Jane. It will kill him to lose you. Did you know that?”

“Peter? Are you saying that Peter cares for me? Peter cares for nobody.”

“You’re his last chance.”

“I don’t believe anybody is anybody’s last chance.” She opened her bag and brought out her cigarettes and her lighter.

“I remember that.”

“What do you remember?”

“The way you’re looking now. Your eyes. Your mouth.”

She lit her cigarette and kept the lighter in her hand. He went to the shelves and took the heavy, round ash tray, bubbles in the blue-tinted glass, and put it on the glass-topped table. He stood above her and she could see up the short sleeves of his loose Mao shirt to his armpits. Her eyes went moist. He sat on the furry arm of her chair; her smoking gestures became smaller, constricted.

He said, “I was frightened of what I saw.”

“Why were you frightened?” She touched the tip of her cigarette, as yet without ash, on the thick rim of the ash tray.

“It always happens like that. I knew I would be involved with you. I knew you were going to come back.” He whispered, “You told massa?”

She looked at him. Her moist eyes were full of irritation, alarm.

He looked at the lighter in her cigarette hand and said, “I remember that. From the Sahara.”

She held out the cigarette to the ash tray; she was about to swallow. He squeezed her hand hard over the ash tray; and her face moved to his, her mouth open, the cigarette falling from her fingers, the lighter hurting in her palm. Her mouth opened wide and pressed against his, and her lips and tongue began to work.

He took his mouth away and said, “Be calm. You’re too greedy. You give yourself away when you kiss like that. A woman’s whole life is in her kiss.”

He released her hand; the lighter fell on the glass-topped table. Her head remained thrown back on the chair; when he went to her mouth again he found her lips barely parted, her tongue withdrawn. He said, “That’s better.” Very lightly, he ran the tip of his tongue between her lips, then on the inside of her lower lip. Then, still lightly, he sucked her lower lip. He took his mouth away and looked at her. Her eyes were still closed. She said, “That was lovely.” He held her face between his hands, jammed the heels of his palms on the corners of her mouth, covering her almost vanished period spots, distending her lips. He covered her mouth with his; her lips widened and she made a strangled sound; and then he spat in her mouth. She swallowed and he let her face go. She opened her eyes and said, “That was lovely.” He put his hands below her wet armpits and began to lift her. But she stood up of her own accord.

She said, “Your eyes are shining.”

“Your eyes are screaming still.”

He touched her with the tips of his fingers in the small of her back, and casually, like old lovers, they walked into the bedroom.

She saw the bare ocher-washed walls, the shiny brown fitted wardrobe, and, through the high wide window, the pale sky. The bathroom door was ajar: she saw the low tiled wall around the shower area, the dry concrete floor. Standing separate from one another, they began, without haste, to undress. The bed was unmade, the mattress showing at the top, the middle of the rumpled sheet brushed smooth and brown from use and spotted with stiff stains. The yellow candlewick bedspread hung over the end of the bed and rested on the maroon carpet.

Jane, unbuttoning her blouse, smiled and said, “Your candle-wick bedspread.”

“So you remember it. You didn’t seem to care for it the last time.”

She nodded slowly, once, and gave her mischievous smile. She took off her blouse and threw it on the brown chest of drawers. Against the rest of her the red, aged skin below her neck looked like a rash; the little folds of flesh in her shaved armpits were wet. She let the Moroccan necklaces fall, with a little ripple of metallic sound, on the chest of drawers. She didn’t take off her brassiere: her breasts were small: he noted that shyness. She stepped out of her shoes and was at once small. She didn’t step out of her trousers, but lifted one leg after the other, in an athletic movement, and pulled the trousers off: a rough, masculine sound. Suddenly, then, her pants a shrunken, wrinkled roll on the carpet, she was on the unmade bed, sighing, smiling at him, her head on the oily pillow; and she looked big again. She opened her legs, put her hand there, and drew her fingers upward through moist flesh and hair. The wanton’s gesture: he noted it, and he seemed to say, “Hm.”

She said, “I hate that shirt.”

“I am taking it off.” His voice was soft.

When, looking very big, he moved toward her, she closed her eyes. She said, “Kiss me, Jimmy,” and waited with lips open, tongue withdrawn. Crouching beside her, he jammed his palms against the corners of her mouth. She made the strangled sound and he covered her mouth with his. He made her swallow, and she rested her hands on his back and said, “Love, love.”

She felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, and suddenly she was turned over on her belly and he was squatting on her, her hips and legs squeezed between his knees, thighs, and feet. He said, “It’s going to be different today, Jane. We’re doing it the other way.” She made as if to rise, but he held her down between the shoulder blades with his left hand, and opened her up with his right. She began to beat her hands on the bed. As soon as, moving down from the base of her spine he touched her where she was smaller, she cried out, “No!” And when he entered, squatting on her, driving in, his ankles pressed against her hips, she began to wail, a dry, scraping, deliberate sound. He said, as though speaking to a child, “But you’re a virgin, Jane. Isn’t it a good thing you came to see me today?” She shouted with real pain, “Take it out, take it out.” She began to wail again. He said, “A big girl like you, and a virgin, Jane? It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But you didn’t bring your Vaseline, you see. A big girl like you should always take her own Vaseline when she goes visiting.” She said, “Oh my God, oh my God.” He said, “It’s better like this, Jane. You didn’t know that? You mean they never told you it was better with your legs closed? Aren’t you glad you came? It’s always better with your legs closed, whatever way you do it.” He drove deeper and deeper, until he was almost sitting upright on her. He said, “We’re breaking you in today, Jane.” He began to withdraw; sweat from his face and chest dripped on her back; she sighed; but he drove in hard and she shrieked. Her hands stopped beating on the bed; her inflamed face was pressed on one side on the pillow. She stopped wailing; she took her right hand to her mouth and began to bite on her thumb; real tears came. Sobbing, biting her thumb, she began to plead, now with a suppressed scream, now with a whisper, “Take it out, take it out.” Her body went soft; she was sweating all over. He withdrew and said, “There now.” She said, “Have you taken it out?” He said, “Yes, Jane. You’ve lost your virginity.”

She remained just as he had left her, her face on the pillow, the tears running down her nose; her untanned buttocks together, spreading slightly, wet with sweat where he had been sitting on her, the fine hairs there flattened in the sweat and showing more clearly. She sobbed and snuffled.

When he was off her, and beside her, not touching her, she said, like a child, “You made me cry! You made me cry!” Her face was red and wet with tears; but she was oddly calm.

He said, “I knew this about you as soon as I saw you that day. As soon as I saw your eyes and the shape of your mouth.”

“My ‘bedroom eyes.’ ”

He said, very softly, “You are rotten meat.”

It was his tone, rather than the words, that alarmed her. When she turned over to look at him she saw that his eyes were very bright and appeared sightless, the pupils mere points of glitter. He was still erect and looked very big.

He put his hand lightly on her shoulder and said, “You look frightened, Jane.”

“I’m thinking I have to go back.”

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, he allowed his hand to slip off her shoulder, and she stood up.

“But I haven’t come, Jane.”

His eyes were on her. She bent down to pick up her pants, heedless of the hairiness and open flesh, her secret once again, that she was exposing. And, bending down, straightening up, she had in one movement pulled her pants on, covering herself where she was untanned and naked.

He said, “Your mouth, Jane. You have a sweet-mouth too. As soon as I saw you I knew you had a sweet-mouth. We must christen it.”

He continued to look at her. She pulled on her trousers; stepped into her shoes; buttoned her blouse, put on the Moroccan necklaces, and shook her hair into place.

She said, “I think I have to go.”

He sat on the edge of the bed; his erection was subsiding. He said, “You have to go. But you know what you are now. You’ll come again for more.”

“I’ll ring for a taxi.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get one to come here. But you don’t have anything to worry about. Massa is coming for you. Massa isn’t going to let you go.” He stood up; he had shrunken. “We’ll walk across to the Grange and meet massa.”

The telephone was on the chest of drawers but she didn’t lift it. She didn’t leave the room. She stood where she was, between the chest of drawers and the door, and waited for him to dress. The pillow was as she had left it, pressed down and damp; the stained sheet had patches of damp. He dressed slowly. When, lifting his chin, he did the top button of his Mao shirt, he said, “The shirt you don’t like.” She responded in no way.

When they went out into the living room, the cigarette in the blue-tinted ash tray had almost burnt itself out, a disintegrating cylinder of ash. The glass of water on the glass-topped table was where she had put it down. She picked up her lighter and bag and followed him out to the porch. The sunlight on the terrazzo was dazzling. He didn’t shut the front door.

They walked out into the heat and the openness. No trees grew between the house and the wall of bush. The road was lightly rubbled: stray pebbles, loosened bits of tarred gravel, clods of earth. The road ended abruptly, cracked asphalt giving way to a dirt path through a dried-up field, overgrown and then flattened by the drought. The path led to the wall of bush.

Jimmy said, “Massa will be waiting for you. A short walk. Ten minutes.”

She didn’t speak.

He said, “We’ll also meet Bryant. You remember Bryant?”

“I don’t want to see Bryant.”

“But he has something for you. Bryant has something for you.”

The green wall of bush, which from a distance had seemed solid, threaded with the slender white trunks and branches of softwood trees, became more pierced and open as they got closer to it.

Jimmy said, “Bryant and I are not friends now, Jane. You’ll help to make us friends.”

It was cooler in the bush. The ground was dry, covered with dead leaves, and spotted with big patches of sunlight. There seemed at first to be no path, just an intermittent disturbance in the dead leaves; and for the first time since she had followed him out of the bedroom she hesitated. He touched the top of her arm and moved the tips of his fingers down the short sleeve of her cotton blouse. Lightly, then, he held her arm and led her on. Ants’ nests, of dried mud, were like black veins on the white trunks of softwood trees. The wild banana was in flower: a solid spray of spearheads of orange and yellow that never turned to fruit, emerging sticky with mauve gum and slime from the heart of the tree.

Jimmy said, “They say there’s always a snake at the bottom of that tree. So be careful. See but never touch. It’s the golden rule of the bush.”

They were now in the middle of the bush, no light and openness behind them, trees and trees ahead of them.

“So you’re leaving us, Jane. That was why you came. Because you’re leaving. Do you have a nice house in London?”

“I’m used to it.”

“Everything nicely put away, I bet. Is it near Wimbledon?”

“No. It isn’t near Wimbledon.”

“Suppose it burns down while you’re away?”

“It’s insured.”

“You’ll just build another?”

“I suppose so.”

He suddenly squeezed her arm and said, “Smell it, Jane!”

She stopped and looked about her.

He said, “You can smell it?”

“What?”

“Snake.”

“I can’t smell anything.”

“It smells of sex, Jane. Bad, stale sex. It smells of a dirty cunt.”

He released her arm. The bush was becoming brighter; they were approaching openness. And soon, through the trees, the clearing on which the Grange stood could be seen: an expanse of brown in a hard white light. There was a latrine smell, which became sharper. The latrine, with corrugated-iron walls and roof and a sagging, open corrugated-iron door, stood on a rough concrete foundation just outside the bush, in direct sunlight. Brilliant green flies buzzed about it and within it, striking the corrugated iron.

They had come out into the back yard of the Grange: no shade, the bush laid waste, the land sterile. The main building blocked a view of the road and of the fields beyond the road. The corrugated-iron roof glittered; the concrete-block walls were in shadow. A roll of wire netting, old scantlings, a junked metal icebox, white enamel basins: this was part of the debris at the back. A low lean- to shelter, its palm thatch sloping down almost to the ground, was fixed to the back wall; below the thatch there was black shadow. Scattered about the ground were back yard structures and relics of back yard projects: a wire-netting pen, torn in places; chicken coops of wire netting and old board; a dry pit, the dug-out earth heaped up on one side beside a load of concrete blocks.

There was a boy in the shadow of the lean-to. He was sitting on the ground in the angle of the thatch and the ground. His knees were drawn up, and his head and arms rested on his knees. He seemed asleep. His white canvas shoes were yellow with dust; his washed-out jeans were dusty; his elbows were scratched and there was dust on his black arms.

“You remember Bryant?”

Jane said, “I don’t remember him.”

“He remembers you.”

The boy raised his head. His face was twisted and he wore the pigtails of aggression. His eyes were red and blurred, one lid half stuck down. He stood up. He ran back into the lean-to, and when he turned to face them he had a cutlass in his hand and he was in tears.

He cried, “Jimmy! Jimmy!”

Jimmy locked his right arm about Jane’s neck and almost lifted her in front of him, pulling back the corners of his mouth with the effort, and slightly puffing out his shaved cheeks, so that he seemed to smile.

He said, “Bryant, the rat! Kill the rat!”

Bryant, running, faltered.

“Your rat, Bryant! Your rat!”

Her right hand was on the arm swelling around her neck, and it was on her right arm that Bryant made the first cut.

The first cut: the rest would follow.

Sharp steel met flesh. Skin parted, flesh showed below the skin, for an instant mottled white, and then all was blinding, disfiguring blood, and Bryant could only cut at what had already been cut.

He cried out, in tears, in pain, in despair, “Help me, Jimmy!”

Jimmy, responding, tightened his grip around the neck. He scarcely felt the neck; he felt only his own strength, the smoothness of his own skin, the tension of his own muscles. He concentrated on that smoothness and tension until she began to fail. She grew heavy; his strength became useless; and as he felt her fail a desolation began to grow on him. And then there was nothing except desolation.

He was squatting on the ground, beside the dry pit of the septic tank and the heap of dug-out earth, looking at the earth and not the face, and not seeing the earth. He saw a day of sun at the beach, sea and sky bright beyond the coconut grove, the girl bleeding on the fender of the car, accepting water from his cupped hands, and love coming to her frightened eyes. But the eyes below him were closed. They knew nothing; they acknowledged nothing; they had taken away everything with them. He entered a void; he disappeared in that void.

Then he was lost, lost since the beginning of time. But time had no beginning. And he was disembodied. He was nothing more than this sense of loss that grew deeper and deeper as he awakened to it; he would have liked to scream, for the relief. The world cleared up, time defined itself. He was himself, in a stone room, full of incense, with stone coffins on stone shelves, where dead women lay without being dead among white lilies. A woman sat up in her stone coffin; the lilies tumbled off her. She was Sudanese, like those he had seen in London: he could tell from her fine white cotton dress, her pallid brown skin and the healed slashes on her cheeks. She had the wanton face, the leer, the degraded mouth of a French prostitute he had seen in a pornographic photograph at school, sitting clothed but with her skirt pulled up, her legs open, her great hairiness exposed. She sat up in her roughly chiseled coffin, leering, the lilies falling off her, and she said, holding out her hand, “Nigger, give me a dollar.”

So that even here, though he had been lost since the beginning of time, though he was lost in time itself, and didn’t know who or what he was, he was betrayed, his secret known.

The secret recalled him to himself, and his desolation was complete. He was squatting beside the girl on the edge of the dry pit, its crumbling walls still carrying fork marks, and Bryant, the cutlass in his hand, was crying, like a man who at any moment was going to scream.

“Jimmy, Jimmy.”

He stood up and held Bryant by the arm. He said, “Bryant!”

“Jimmy, Jimmy.”

“In here, Bryant.”

“In the latrine, Jimmy.”

“No. The corbeaux will come.”

And Bryant looked up with Jimmy at the pale sky.

They put her in the pit, with her dead hair, still loose where it was not stained and stiff, with her necklaces, her open bag. The heaped-up earth beside the pit, dug out weeks before, had settled and seemed hard; but it broke up and crumbled at a touch, red-brown below the straw-colored, powdery crust. At first with their hands and feet alone, then with concrete blocks, then with a spade, they broke up the earth and shoveled it in, until there was nothing to be seen; and there remained only dust and labor, burning faces and arms, sweat and the stinging sun.

Far away, from the road, it seemed, there came the sound of whistling. No recognizable tune, and it stopped almost as soon as they heard it.

They looked up at the sky: it was empty.

Then the whistling came again, closer. Bryant looked at Jimmy. Jimmy said, “Bryant.” Bryant ran for his cutlass. Jimmy said, “Bryant!” And this time Bryant obeyed. He began to do what he saw Jimmy doing: rubbing clods of red-brown earth on his trousers and shirt. Jimmy undid the buttons of his Mao shirt, and the two men, Bryant with his cutlass, walked to the back door of the main building, into sudden shade.

A young man was coming up to the building from the road. He was small, his blue shirt slack and bulging above his tight striped brown trousers. He was wearing white-rimmed shades; his shoes, too tight for him, gave him a dainty walk; a white airlines bag hung from his shoulder.

Bryant said, “Mannie.”

Jimmy said, “Nowhere to go. They’ll start coming back. All of them. But it’s too late.”

“Jimmy, Jimmy.”

“It’s too late for them now.”

“Let me take him out, Jimmy. Let me take him out!”

Jimmy didn’t reply. He went into the building and walked halfway down between the empty beds. Bryant remained in the back doorway.

Mannie came in out of the sun. He took off his white-rimmed shades: his nose was shining and there was sweat all over his face. He looked at Jimmy and said shyly, “Mr. Ahmed,” and looked down. His small black shoes were extravagantly pointed; the points tilted up, the heels were worn. He went to his old bed and sat on the edge of the bare mattress, with his back to Jimmy and Bryant. He opened the airlines bag and began taking out small green tomatoes and laying them on the concrete floor.

Bryant said from the back doorway, “Let me take him out, Jimmy.”

Mannie didn’t turn.

Jimmy sat on one of the empty beds and said, “Mannie.”

Mannie turned. “Yes, Mr. Ahmed?”

“You come back?”

“I walk down from the highway, Mr. Ahmed.”

“That’s a long walk for a hot day. We’ve been working.”

“Mr. Ahmed.”

“And now you come back. And you start picking my tomatoes.”

Mannie’s face went small and closed. Little beads of sweat began to grow on his shiny nose.

Jimmy stood up. He slapped his hand hard on his right trouser pocket and said, “Mannie!”

Mannie stood up. The corners of his eyes were red.

“I lose my pen, Mannie.”

“Mr. Ahmed.”

“My red biro. Yellow with a red cap. I think I drop it outside somewhere. I don’t want to lose it. Go and look for it for me.”

Mannie came out into the aisle. He hesitated there. He looked at the bright front door. Then he began to walk slowly toward Jimmy, Bryant, and the back door.

Jimmy said, “Go and look by the septic tank.”

Mannie walked daintily in his tight shoes, his buttocks high and hard in his tight trousers, his loosened handkerchief bulging in his hip pocket, with one corner hanging out.

Jimmy said, “I don’t want to lose that pen, Mannie.”

Jimmy sat on another bed. Bryant remained standing in the doorway.

After some time they heard light steps. They saw Mannie. As soon as he saw them he stopped, about five or six feet away from the back door. There was dust in his hair; his blue shirt was dark with sweat around the collar and below the arms; dust discolored his trousers from the knees down.

Jimmy said, “Mannie.”

“Sorry, Mr. Ahmed.”

“You didn’t see anything?”

“No, Mr. Ahmed.”

Jimmy said, “Lie down, Bryant. Take a rest. Come in, nuh, Mannie.”

Mannie came in, his sweated face tight, his eyes burning, his walk still dainty.

Jimmy said, “But you spoil all your pretty clothes, Mannie.”

Mannie didn’t seem to hear. He went to his bed and, not dusting his hair or trousers or hands, sat on the mattress. He looked down at the concrete floor and his eyes began to water.

Jimmy said, “We’re all tired. We all have to rest. But what about you, Mannie? Where you going to go? No food here now. The Grange is closed.”

Mannie, his eyes still watering, didn’t turn.

Bryant got up from the bed nearest the back door. He said, “Somebody coming.”

Jimmy, going to the wall and tiptoeing to look through the louvers, saw the car far away on the road, beyond the last cleared field. There was dazzle on the bonnet, but the windscreen was in shadow and the driver could not be seen.

Jimmy said, “Lie down, Bryant. Save your strength. Mannie, I’m going to clean up.”

He went out through the back door. Bryant put his cutlass on the concrete floor between the wall and his bed and lay down flat on the bare mattress. The coconut-fiber filling bristled through the ticking. Bryant looked up at the corrugated-iron roof, so new still, with the cockerel emblem and the name of the manufacturers, far away in Canada, stenciled in blue.

The car came nearer. It stopped; a door banged. A disturbance of dirt clods and pebbles, and Roche appeared, with his short-sleeved white shirt, his light-colored khaki trousers narrow around his flat waist, and his dark glasses. He came into the building, took off the glasses and put the end of one temple in his mouth. His face was drawn and he looked impatient. He saw the tears in Mannie’s eyes.

He said, “Mannie.”

Mannie didn’t look up. He said, “Mr. Ahmed gone to wash his face.”

“You’ve been working?”

Mannie didn’t reply. And Roche, waiting, considered the table with the junked office equipment, the dusty stalled standard typewriter, the rusting duplicator; the timetable on the wall, the newspaper pinups above the beds; the Jimmy Ahmed poster with the crude portrait of Jimmy, all hair and mustache: I’m Nobody’s Slave or Stallion, I’m a Warrior and Torch Bearer. The concrete floor was dusty; the iron beds were stripped; and the bare mattresses gave off a smell of coconut fiber. Roche saw that the bed at the far end of the room was occupied.

He said, “Bryant.”

Bryant didn’t reply.

Jimmy appeared in the doorway. He was bare-chested, and his face was blank, the eyes assessing, his mustache masking his mouth.

He said, “Massa. We were giving you up. A tour of inspection? You’re still inspecting?”

Roche said, “You all seem to be in a state.”

“We’ve been working. Life has to go on. Bryant will take you out and show you. Mannie too.”

Bryant rose and sat on the edge of his bed, facing the wall.

Jimmy came down between the beds and stood a few feet away from Roche.

Jimmy said, “Mannie has come back, massa.”

Mannie half raised himself off the mattress and took out his handkerchief from his hip pocket.

Roche said, “Did Donaldson come?”

“We don’t have anything to do with Donaldson. All that’s gone with the wind.”

Jimmy’s chest, paler than his face and forearms, was moist with perspiration. Stiff little coils of hair, unexpectedly Negroid, were scattered between his purple-brown nipples, which were as large as a woman’s.

Roche sucked on the end of the temple of his dark glasses. He said, “Didn’t he come to see you about the tractor?”

“To take it back, you mean?”

“I don’t know about that. He didn’t come?”

“If he came we didn’t see him. We’ve been busy all afternoon. Bryant will show you.”

“Nobody came?”

“We didn’t see anybody.”

Roche looked at Mannie. Mannie’s eyes were still wet and he was still looking down. His loosened handkerchief, unused, remained in his right hand. In that same hand he was holding a cylindrical blue lighter and, absently, he was polishing the bronze-colored metal at the top with his thumb. Roche hesitated. He thought: Sahara gas. In his hesitation his eyes caught Jimmy’s — surprise there, and for an instant something like an appeal. And almost at the same time he saw Bryant standing at the far end of the room, looking at him.

Roche took the temple of his glasses out of his mouth and, swinging the glasses between his thumb and forefinger, took a half-step toward Mannie’s bed. Then he stopped and turned and, slowly, looking at the beds, mattresses, and the posters on the wall, he walked toward the bright door. He said, “Everybody at the office knows I’m here. I’m sure they told Donaldson. A wasted journey.” He was in the sunlight. He put on his glasses and said, “But never mind,” and stepped from the concrete floor onto the dry red earth.

And he was walking away — the land graded down to clay, baked hard, dusty on the surface — when he heard Jimmy call, but uncertainly, “Massa.”

He kept on walking.

He thought: This place has become a slaughterground. The words seemed, to have been given to him, and he thought: I’ve just done the bravest thing in my life. He concentrated on Jimmy and addressed him mentally: You wouldn’t do anything to me. You wouldn’t dare.

He came to the dry ditch and the bridge of tree trunks and packed earth. He got into the car. He didn’t look at the land he had just traversed or the building he had just left. He thought: If you try anything now, I’ll kill you.

He turned in the road — two movements, and still no one called out to him — and then he was driving into the sun, past the field with the broken-down tractor standing against the wall of bush, past the dry flattened ridges and the furrows choked with bright green weeds, past the blocks of old bush, the spiky wild palms, the red-and-black-striped barrier pointing at the sky, the Sablich’s sign, still new, announcing Thrushcross Grange, past the ruins of the abandoned industrial park, the overgrown pillars still standing in rows, the flat paved areas cracked open by grass and wild young trees, rusty reinforcing metal showing here and there through broken concrete.

And then he was on the highway, locked in the afternoon traffic, and he was being taken past all the stations of that familiar drive. The sun, already yellowing, picked out all the ridges and dips of the scorched hills, which smoked. Far away in the brown fields people were cutting grass. The junked cars beside the road; the country settlements; the burning rubbish dump, trucks and people amid the smoke and the miniature hills of confetti-like refuse, the big-breasted black corbeaux squatting on the fence posts or hopping about on the ground; the shantytown resettlements, their population spilling out of rows of identical tin-and-concrete huts, back to back and face to face down long red avenues that seemed regularly to open and close as he drove past; the bauxite pall; the hot, squalling afternoon city, melting tar, honking buses and taxis and enraged, sweating cyclists.

As he climbed to the cooler air of the Ridge, the more spacious gardens, the wider verges, Roche thought: I won’t be safe at home. They’ll come for me. I can’t watch all night. I’ll have to spend the night at the Prince Albert.

The afternoon light was mellow on the Ridge. Thin rainless clouds of pure white were building up high in the sky, for the sunset. He parked in the garage, but he didn’t go through the door into the kitchen. He walked back to the front lawn and went through the front door, bleached and mottled by the sun, into the hall, and down the parquet passage to Jane’s room. The flush plywood door was ajar.

He said, “Jane,” and lightly pushed the door open.

The louvers were open, the room was bright and warm. The bed was made up, but there was no bedspread; the white cotton nightdress could be seen below the pillow. On the bedside table there was the paperback of The Woodlanders, the cover and the opening pages raised and curling in the heat. The suitcase, on the floor of the fitted wardrobe, was half packed. Only the striped North African sacking dress was on a hanger. All the shelves except one were cleared. On this shelf, with a small jewelry box, some bottles and phials and tins, and a necklace of sandalwood beads, Roche saw Jane’s passport and her airline ticket folder. In the passport was the disembarkation card Jane had filled in months before but had not surrendered.

He took the ticket out of the folder and tore it up and put the pieces in his pocket. He tore up the disembarkation card. But the passport couldn’t be so easily destroyed. His mind, racing, rejected all the possibilities. The passport couldn’t be torn up and flushed down the toilet. It couldn’t be burned: there was no open fire in the house; there was only a metal contraption beside the porch for barbecues.

He went, the passport still in his hand, to the sitting room. It was very warm there, from the sun, the heat thrown out by the brown lawn, the fixed picture window.

He telephoned Harry de Tunja. Joseph answered.

Waiting for Harry, Roche opened the passport and considered Jane’s picture: a washed-out print, the cheeks too full, the hair lank and schoolgirlish.

“Harry. Peter.”

“Well, well, man.”

“Harry, Jane has left me. She’s left her clothes behind, but she’s taken her ticket and passport.”

Roche, looking at the passport, read Jane’s handwritten responses to the printed queries. Occupation: Publisher. Place and Date of Birth: Ottawa 17 July 1943.

Harry said, “That’s a hell of a thing you’re telling me, man, Peter.” But there was no surprise in Harry’s voice. “You sure, boy?”

Country of Residence: England. Height: 5′6″.

Roche said, “I don’t know what else to think.”

“You would know better than anybody else. But you know, Peter, I feel this is just a kind of chain reaction that Marie-Thérèse set off.”

“The clothes she’s left behind aren’t very valuable. She didn’t bring out a lot.”

Roche turned the page and read: Valid for All Parts of the Commonwealth and for All Foreign Countries. On the page opposite: Observations: Holder Has Right of Abode in the United Kingdom.

Harry said, “Perhaps she went on that BOAC flight. You could check in the morning. But, look, I’ll telephone Mackenzie at the airport. The immigration people will be there now for the Varig flight. I’ll telephone you back.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

There was no exit or arrival stamp in the passport. It was like a passport that had never been used.

And when Roche put the telephone down he was alarmed at what he had done.

He sat on the porch and looked down at the city.

He heard Adela call out, “Water! One-among-you, water!”

The clouds turned pink. Streaks of gray appeared in the sky. The telephone rang, and when he went to the sitting room he saw that he had left the passport beside the telephone.

“Peter. Harry. Has Jane come back?”

“She hasn’t come back.”

“The immigration people have no record of her departure. But they don’t know anything about her arrival either. Officially she’s never been here. You and I and a few other people know she’s been here. But officially she hasn’t been. The best thing would be for you to telephone BOAC in the morning.”

“That would be the best thing.”

“What do you think you’ll do? You’ll be going up after her?”

“I think that is what I’ll have to do.”

“It’s the best thing, I think.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Roche went to Jane’s room. It was as he had left it. The wardrobe doors were open; The Woodlanders was on the bedside table. The louvers were open and the room was full of an amber light. He threw the passport into the half-packed suitcase on the floor of the wardrobe, and then he went and sat on the porch.

The sun set. Lights came on in the city. Adela was in the kitchen; fluorescent light came through the kitchen windows.

When the telephone rang, he was quite prepared. He went to the sitting room. It was in darkness; he didn’t put on the light.

Jimmy said, “I want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. I want you to get in your car and drive here immediately.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“You must come, massa. There’s no one else I can ask. They’ve left me alone, massa.”

“You’ll have to stay where you are, Jimmy. And I won’t be coming out to see you.”

“Bryant’s not well. You’ve all made him mad. You must come and help me with him, massa.”

“And you shouldn’t think of coming here. It isn’t safe for you to be out these days, Jimmy. You know that. There are police road blocks everywhere. There’s one on the Ridge road. I think you will find that they will be particularly interested in you. Do you understand? I’m leaving you alone. That’s the way it’s going to be. We are leaving you alone. I am leaving. I am going away. Jane and I are leaving tomorrow. Jane is in her room packing. We are leaving you here. Are you hearing me? Jimmy?”

“Massa.”