State of Siege

9

The first tank reached the Van Riebeeck Square just before sundown.

No great flights of military imagination had been needed to devise General Ishak’s plan of attack. The modern dock area south of the river had been quietly occupied by Government troops after the bombing of the road and rail bridges the previous afternoon. It was only the semi-circle of city north of the river, and centred on the Van Riebeeck Square, that he had to take by force. The rebel outer defence ring had been held together by three strong points: the canal network of the old port, the garrison barracks and a rubber factory in the suburbs. He had decided to make his break-through a little to the south of the barracks under a covering bombardment from the destroyer, then fan out right and left, rolling up the outer defences as he went. Finally, he would turn east again and send three armoured columns to converge on rebel headquarters. In view of the superior forces at his disposal, there was no likelihood of the plan failing. All that remained to be learned was how soon it would succeed.

The reduction of the outer defences had been all but completed by mid-day, though it had not been quite as easy as Ishak had expected. At several points, the defenders had been agile enough to slip through his cumbersome enveloping movements and re-establish themselves in new positions; but in the end, they were squeezed back, and all they succeeded in gaining for themselves by their efforts was a little time that they could not use. By three o’clock the turn to the east had been made, and the armoured columns were carving their way through towards the centre, the speed of their advance controlled only by that of the infantry mopping up behind them.

Not long after five, there was a tremendous burst of firing along the Telegraf Road; machine guns, mortars, a two-pounder; the noise was deafening. The sun was low now, and I could see smoke drifting up over the roofs less than a quarter of a mile away. Where the Telegraf Road entered the square there was a sudden flurry of activity. There were men running back out of the road and other men running forward into it. Then, one of the two-pounders out in the square began to fire. I heard Rosalie give a startled gasp and turned round. She was crouching behind the balustrade with her fingers in her ears. When I looked back across the square, there were no running men. One of them was lying face downwards in the centre of the road. The rest had taken cover against the walls of the building that jutted out on the corner. The two-pounder was firing rapidly, bouncing about in its shallow pit, sending up a cloud of yellow dust and adding to the racket of the machine guns; then, for an instant, there was a gap in the sound, and through it I heard the shrill squeaking of a tank’s tracks.

It nosed out of the end of the road, and seemed to hesitate there for a moment like a dull-witted bull blinking in the sunlight of the arena. There was a black stain down the side of it that looked as if it had been made by an oil bomb. The two-pounder fired twice and I saw a streak of silver appear on the turret. Every automatic weapon in the square seemed to be firing at that moment, and the sound of the tank’s own machine gun was lost in the din. But it was the tank’s gun that was effective. Dust spurted up all around the two-pounder, and suddenly it was no longer firing. I saw one of the gunners start to crawl out of the pit, and then a second burst finished him. Two more bursts wiped out the crews of two of the machine guns.

The tank lurched forward and then made a left turn. It controlled the square now, and was ready to demonstrate the fact to anyone foolish enough to dispute it. Apparently, nobody was. The crew of the other two-pounder out in the square were scrambling for cover among the trees, and the remaining machine-gunners who, a moment ago, had been blazing away so fiercely at the tank’s armour plating, were now crouching discreetly in their fox-holes. The tank began to move along the north side of the square searching for targets. From away across the square some optimist began dropping mortar bombs near it. And then, suddenly the situation changed. There was a noise like an enormous paper bag being exploded. Immediately on top of it there was a spine-jarring crack. At the same moment the tank swung round broadside on and stopped in a cloud of dust.

The commander of it knew his job. Within a few seconds, he was putting down smoke; though not before another bazooka bomb had sent fragments of the broken track screaming up through the trees overhead. As the smoke drifted back across the tank, I could see the turret traversing rapidly and knew that the commander had spotted the bazookas’ position. If the men handling them did not move quickly, they would become sitting targets as soon as the smoke thinned; but, like innocents, they were settling down expectantly to wait for another chance to knock the tank out.

Rosalie touched my arm. I looked round and saw that Roda had come into the living room. We went back quickly into the bedroom.

After a moment, Sanusi walked out on to the terrace and looked down on to the square. Roda was talking to someone in the next room, but it was impossible to hear the conversation. When the other person went, Roda joined Sanusi at the balustrade.

There was some sort of disagreement between the two men. Roda was trying to persuade Sanusi of something and Sanusi would appear to be listening; then he would turn away abruptly and Roda would have to go after him and begin all over again. Once Sanusi turned sharply and asked a question. Roda had his document case with him, and in reply he held it up and patted it.

Down in the square, the tank’s turret gun began firing suddenly and the building shook as something crashed into it. Rosalie looked at me inquiringly. I said I thought that the tank was firing at the place where the bazooka crews were dug in, and that the shot had probably ricocheted into the building down below. She nodded understandingly, as if I had been apologising for the noise made by an inconsiderate neighbour.

Another tank had entered the square now. I could hear it squeaking along the road in the opposite direction to the first one and firing bursts from its machine gun.

Then, the sun went down, and for nearly a minute there was no sound from the square except the squeaking of the tank tracks. Along the Telegraf Road, however, the firing intensified and I could hear the thumping of grenades. The infantry were moving up now, clearing the defended houses that the tanks had left behind them. Now and again, the drifting smoke would be illuminated momentarily by the flash of an explosion below.

A shoe grated outside on the terrace.

“Mr. Fraser.” It was Roda’s voice.

I went to the window. There were no lights on in the apartment, nor was there a moon yet. He was about ten feet away and for a moment I did not see him.

“Yes, Colonel?”

“Come here, please.”

I went over. Beyond him, along the terrace, Sanusi stirred and rested his elbows on the balustrade.

Roda lowered his voice. “I must speak in confidence to you, Mr. Fraser.”

“Yes?”

“It has become necessary for the General and myself to leave this headquarters.”

“Yes?”

“We have done all we can here. It is better to live for a cause than to die for it uselessly. That is our choice now. I have persuaded our Boeng that it is his duty to live.”

“I see.”

“It has been a difficult decision, you will understand.” He paused.

“I can see that.”

“More difficult than you might think.”

“No doubt.” I was trying unavailingly to understand the reason for these confidences.

“For two men, withdrawal from this headquarters is still possible. If more should attempt it, all will fail. There must be secrecy.”

“Of course.” That, at least, I could understand.

“As there was when Napoleon withdrew from Egypt.”

For a moment, I thought that he was making a tasteless joke. But no; his lips were pursed solemnly. He saw himself as the Marmont of this occasion.

I mumbled agreement.

“I tell you this, Mr. Fraser, because there is a matter in which you can help us.”

“Yes?”

“If we are to withdraw successfully we cannot go in our uniforms.”

“I see that.”

“It is the shirts. Our pants will attract no attention. We merely need civilian shirts. I think you have some.”

“Shirts?” I stared at him stupidly.

“Two will be enough. You have clean ones?”

“Yes, I have.” I also had a terrible desire to laugh.

“Then perhaps you will get them.”

“Now?”

“At once, please.”

I turned and went back into the bedroom. In there, I tried switching on the light, but the power was off. Rosalie watched me incredulously, while I struck a match and began fumbling in the drawers. I knew that I had only one clean shirt left. This round would have to be on Jebb. I found the right drawer eventually, picked out two of the oldest shirts there, and took them out on to the terrace. Roda nodded approval.

“I’m afraid they will be a bit large for you, Colonel.”

“That is unimportant.” He folded them carefully and put them in his document case. “They are light-coloured but not …”

“Colonel!” It was Sanusi’s voice.

Roda turned inquiringly.

Sanusi had moved away from the balustrade and was standing in the centre of the terrace. I thought I saw a pistol in his hand, but it was too dark to see properly. At the same moment, there were footsteps in the living room, and Aroff and Major Dahman came out on to the terrace.

“Boeng,” Aroff began, “you sent for us?”

“Yes,” said Sanusi; and then he fired.

The first bullet hit Roda in the stomach. For a second, he stood quite still; then he dropped the document case and took a step forward. The second bullet hit him in the right shoulder and he twisted forward on to his knees. He began to say something, but Sanusi paid no attention to him.

To Aroff and Dahman, he said: “I sent for you to witness an execution.” Then, he went up to Roda and shot him again in the back of the head.

Roda slid forward on to his face.

Aroff and Dahman did not move as Sanusi turned towards them. Across the square, one of the tanks began firing its turret gun.

“What was the offence, Boeng?” Aroff said.

“He was attempting to desert. You will find the evidence in there.” He shone a flashlight on to the document case. “Open it.”

Aroff walked over to the document case and opened it up. The shirts fell out. He looked up at me.

“Yes, they were from the Englishman,” said Sanusi. “I leave that matter to you. All officers of the defence force must be informed of the execution and the reason. The body should be put where they can see it. For the public I shall issue a simple statement informing them that, in view of the pressure of Colonel Roda’s military duties, I have taken over the Secretaryship of the Party for the time being. There must be no suggestion at this moment of a division in our ranks. I also have to consider world opinion. Firmness in such matters is not always understood.”

He made these announcements with the cool authority of a leader secure in the possession of great power and the habit of using it with wisdom and restraint. He seemed totally unaware of their absurd incongruity. I saw Aroff look at him sharply.

“We have yet to hear from Djakarta,” Sanusi added; “I think the time has come for me to speak to President Soekarno personally.” With a nod to Aroff, he turned and walked away through the living room.

Aroff looked at Dahman, who shrugged slightly, and then at me. “What happened, Mr. Fraser?”

I told him. He made no comment. When I had finished he looked at Dahman.

“Well, Major, what do you think?” He nodded towards Roda’s body. “Perhaps he was right. Of two men, one might be lucky.”

Dahman smiled grimly. “And the other? I have seen Ishak’s way of putting a renegade to death. I would prefer to shoot myself now rather than risk that.”

“Are you a coward, Dahman?”

“About some things, Colonel.”

“So am I.” Aroff handed the shirts to me. “You see, Mr. Fraser? We have no use for them either.” A gun flash lit up his face for an instant as he looked out across the square. “They will have their artillery up soon,” he remarked; “then, there will be no more doubts to trouble us.”

He turned to leave but at the living-room window he paused and looked back. “Mr. Fraser, if Roda had anything else belonging to you, something that you may need, you should take it at once.”

I stood there staring after him uncertainly as he went through into the corridor. Then, Rosalie was at my elbow.

“Steven! He means the pistol.”

“Are you sure?” I was still trying not to be sick.

“Yes. He means you to take the pistol.”

“All right.”

The holster was near enough to the side for me to get the pistol out of it without getting blood on my hands, but the spare magazines were on the other side of the belt, and I knew that I would have to turn the body over to get at them. There was a sound of footsteps in the corridor. We hurried back to the bedroom and I slipped the pistol into a drawer with the shirts on top of it.

The guards had a simple way of moving the body. They rolled it on to a mat that they had taken out of the living room and dragged it away. As they went, they made jokes about Roda’s plumpness. They seemed in excellent spirits. In one respect, at least, Sanusi’s officers had been successful; they had managed to conceal the truth about their predicament from the unfortunate rank and file.

When they had gone, I got a flashlight out of my suitcase and examined the pistol. It had a full magazine in it and there was a round in the breech. Rosalie watched intently, and when I had unloaded it to make sure that I knew how it worked, she asked if she might handle it.

The possession of the pistol obviously pleased her a great deal more than it pleased me. I remembered how, when I had wakened her the first night, thinking that there were thieves getting into the apartment, her first thought had been to ask if I had a revolver.

When I had shown her how to load and fire it and had explained the safety catch, I thought that I had better try to modify her enthusiasm for the thing.

“Pistols are not really very much use except for frightening people,” I said.

“Colonel Roda would not agree with you.”

“The General was six feet away and Roda wasn’t expecting it. I’ve seen people miss a target in broad daylight with a pistol at that range.”

“But if anyone attacks us, we can kill him.”

“The fact that you have a pistol can be more dangerous than being unarmed. A soldier might not kill an unarmed civilian, but if he sees someone facing him with a gun in his hand, he may shoot rather than take a chance.”

“I think it is better to have it.”

“As long as we don’t have to use it, it’s fine.”

“You had a revolver.”

“There was a time up in Tangga when there were a lot of snakes about, and sometimes they got into our rooms. So I had a revolver. But the only time I tried to use it I missed, and after that I kept a shot-gun. I left that behind.”

“Then the pistol is no good?” She sounded bitterly disappointed.

“It’s an excellent pistol, and, as you say, it’s better to have it than not. But what we need at this moment is somewhere to go when the fighting starts.”

“When it starts? What is all that going on over there?”

There was, indeed, a fierce machine-gun and mortar battle going on around the College of Agriculture on the far side of the square. Some of Sanusi’s troops had dug themselves in in the College grounds, and now the Government infantry were having to ferret them out.

“When it starts here, I mean. It’s not going to be easy for them to take this building. They’ll have to do it floor by floor. I don’t want to be here when they start throwing grenades about.”

“But where is there to go?”

“The roof would be safer. It’s not so enclosed. I want to try and find the way up there. Will you come with me or would you sooner stay here?”

“I will come with you.”

I hung the pistol by its trigger guard on a nail at the back of the cupboard, and we went out on to the terrace.

A car outside the big building at the end of the Telegraf Road was on fire, and the immobilised tank was using armour-piercing shot to break up a sandbagged defence position in one of the corner shops. The smoke and the glare and the noise made it all seem like a sequence from a somewhat improbable war film. The glare, however, was useful.

We went along the terrace past the bathhouse to the barrier wall which had been dislocated by the shell burst. There was a gap between the wall and the balustrade, and it was not too difficult to squeeze through. Beyond it we had to walk carefully. This terrace did not broaden out as Jebb’s did, and the rubble was piled up against the balustrade. Farther along, where the balustrade had broken away and fallen down into the roadway, it was impassable; but by going through what should have been the bed and living rooms, it was possible to get round on to the terrace again beyond the obstruction. No more barrier walls had yet been erected, and from there on it was easy. I knew that somewhere on that floor there must be a stairway up to the roof. What I had wanted to find was a way of getting to it without being seen or having to pass the sentry stationed outside the apartment. By going along the terraces of the unfinished apartments for most of the way, it was possible to reach the stairway without using any of the passage visible to the sentry.

The roof was quite flat with an eighteen-inch parapet running round it. At intervals along the parapet concrete blocks had been let in to hold the guy wires for the radio masts. There were the usual water tanks and ventilating shafts.

The sounds of the battle for the College of Agriculture had died down, and we had just started to walk over to the parapet, when there was a bright flash from somewhere way across the square, a stab of pain in my ears and the whole building jumped as if it had been dynamited. For one absurd instant, I even thought that it had. Then there was another flash, and the same thing happened again. General Ishak had brought his guns into action.

We hurried down the stairs and back to the apartment. There was no point in hurrying: I suppose that it was just a panic desire to be in familiar surroundings. As we went along one of the terraces, I could see that there were two more tanks in the square now, and that they were moving round the perimeter into positions from which they could give covering fire to the assault troops. The eighty-eights were firing at twenty-second intervals and with shattering effect. At that range they could not miss. When the first rounds had landed there had been shouts and screams from below. Now, those had stopped. After about five minutes the guns changed their targets. One of them began to take pot shots at the first-floor windows. The others started to pound the Ministry of Public Health.

There was nobody in the apartment when we returned, but I guessed that it would not be long before a general movement away from the lower floors began. I told Rosalie to put anything of special value that she had there into her handbag. My money and air ticket, and the few personal papers that I had, I stuffed into my pockets. Then, I took the pistol and a bottle of water and hid them along the terrace where they could be picked up easily when we moved out.

The din was appalling now and the whole place shook continually. Rosalie seemed more bewildered by the noise than frightened. When she had collected what she wanted to take with her and I gave her a glass of whisky, it was my hand that was shaking. I had made up my mind that the moment to move would be when the assault began. From then on, there would be little chance of anyone caring where we were; it would be everyone for himself. The trouble with me was that I could no longer see what was going on. Once or twice, a machine gun in the square had sprayed the windows of the floor below with bullets, and I knew that if I tried looking over the balustrade now I should almost certainly be seen and draw fire. So I had to sit there drinking whisky, listening and trying to imagine what was happening.

At about seven thirty there was a sudden lull, and from down in the square there came a series of small plopping bangs that sounded as if someone were letting off fireworks. A moment or two later, there was a lot of confused shouting from the floor below. I put my glass down and went out on to the terrace. As I did so, there were some more bangs. The Ministry next door was burning and the smoke from it was drifting over to mingle with the stink of shell fumes rising from below. My eyes were smarting anyway. Then, I became aware of another smell and a sudden pain between the eyes. I turned quickly and went back into the room.

“We’re going now,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Tear gas. If we get too much of it we shan’t be able to see to get up to the roof.”

As we scrambled through the gap on to the next terrace, our eyes began to stream, but I managed to find the bottle of water and the pistol, and once we were past the rubble we did not have to be so careful about looking where we were going.

I did not have to see now to know what was happening below. The bigger guns were silent, but there was incessant automatic fire and the frame of the building was transmitting an intermittent thudding that was certainly from bursting grenades. There were other sounds, too; the hoarse, inhuman screams and yells that come from men’s throats when they are killing at close quarters.

The moment the tear gas had gone in and the defenders were blinded by it, a party of assault troops in respirators had rushed the Air Terminal. Now, with grenades, machine pistols and parangs, they were clearing the ground floor and basements. Other parties would be storming the rear of the building. The business of clearing the upper floors would soon follow. First, more tear gas; then, up the stairs. “Quick as lightning. Every room. First a grenade, and then yourself. Doesn’t matter what’s there. Doesn’t matter who’s there. Then, comb it out with your machine pistol.”

I had already decided where we would go on the roof. There was no cover worth speaking of, and if the defence did last long enough to make a stand there, all we could do would be to lie flat on our faces and hope for the best. The important thing for us was to stay close to the apartment. If Suparto had remembered his promise to warn the assault troops of our presence, we wanted to be there when they arrived. The place I had chosen, therefore, was the section of parapet immediately above the apartment terrace.

We soon found it. The anti-aircraft machine gun which had showered the terrace with cartridge cases had been mounted there, and that part of the roof was strewn with empties. There was a good deal of tear gas about, but most of it seemed to be coming up from below through the ventilators, and when we got to windward of them the air was better. By leaning forward, I could see the terrace below. There was nobody there, and, as far as I could tell, the apartment was still empty. We sat down beside the parapet to dab our eyes and blow our noses and try not to listen to the massacre going on beneath us.

We had been there about twenty minutes when there was a sound of men blundering through the living room immediately below. A moment later Sanusi and Major Dahman came out on to the terrace, coughing and gasping for breath. I could hear others moaning and retching and stumbling about behind them.

It was Dahman who managed to find his voice first.

“Not here, Boeng,” he said hoarsely.

“Where is Aroff?”

“Aroff is dead, Boeng. You saw him.”

“Yes. I shall stay here.”

“They will take you alive.”

“No, they will not do that.”

There was a commotion from the passage beyond. A man was shouting something about surrender.

“You are in command, Dahman.”

“I will return for you if I can, Boeng. But we cannot die like women begging for mercy. We must counter-attack.”

He started to cough again as he went back through the living room, but a moment later I heard him gasping out an order about assembling on the stairs. I leaned forward cautiously and looked down on to the terrace.

Sanusi was walking slowly towards the balustrade. He had a machine pistol in his hand. At the end of the terrace he stopped and looked round, drawing deep breaths and wiping his face with the back of his hand. Then, he knelt down and, putting the gun beside him on the ground, began to say his prayers.

He went through the Rakats; then, he began to intone a passage from the Koran.

“But what shall teach thee what the night-comer is? It is the star of piercing radiance. Truly every soul has a guardian over it. Let man then reflect out of what he was created. He was created of the poured-forth germs which issue from between the loins and breastbones. Well able truly is Allah, the all-seeing, the all-knowing, the all-merciful, to restore him to life, on the day when all secrets shall be searched out, and he shall have no other might or helper.”

I looked down at Rosalie. She took my hand and pressed it against her face.

He was still kneeling there when there was a series of violent explosions that felt as if they were coming from right underneath us, and somewhere not far away a man began screaming. Then, the screaming was drowned by a blast of automatic fire as the assaulting troops reached the head of the staircase.

I saw Sanusi grab the machine pistol, get to his feet and start towards the window. At the same moment a grenade burst in the living room.

The blast flung him across the terrace like an empty sack, but he was on his feet in an instant, and as he rose he pressed the trigger of the machine pistol. Someone inside was firing back, and for a few seconds the air was torn to pieces. I saw the grenade land on the terrace outside the bedroom windows just in time to drop behind the parapet. Then, there was an ear-splitting concussion, another burst of automatic fire and silence. When I dared to look down again, three men in steel helmets were walking out slowly on to the terrace.

Two of them looked round warily and then began to move along towards the bathhouse, their arms at the ready. The third man went over to Sanusi’s body and shone a flashlight on it. Then, he turned and looked at the bedroom window.

“Mr. Fraser,” he called.

“We’re up here, Major,” I said.

The moon had risen. Down in the square, the dead were still being piled into trucks and driven away, so that, in the morning, when the Minister of Public Enlightenment issued a statement minimising the importance of the whole affair, no sceptical foreign newspapermen would be able to refute his casualty figures. The few surviving wounded were already in sick quarters at the garrison barracks, and therefore inaccessible. The disabled tank had been hauled on to a transporter and removed. The other tanks had retired together with the self-propelled eighty-eights. The square was being patrolled by two small armoured cars. Now and again there would be a faint rattle of fire from the outskirts of the city as stragglers or would-be escapers were rounded up and killed. The building next door had nearly burned itself out.

There were some eggs left in the kitchen and a Primus stove. While I held the flashlight, Rosalie made an omelette. I salvaged a couple of broken chairs from the chaos in the living room and we ate out on the terrace. It was not comfortable and the smoke still drifted over, but we were very hungry and did not care. We were eating the last of the fruit when Major Suparto returned.

I offered him fruit, but he declined stiffly.

“No, thank you, Mr. Fraser. I have to report to General Ishak and must leave immediately.”

“I see. Well, what’s the news?”

“I do not think that Miss Linden need feel alarmed for her sister’s safety. I am told that there is little damage in that quarter. Apart from that, I regret that the news I have for you is not good. The streets about here are forbidden to civilians at present. If you insist on leaving, I will provide you with an escort, but I do not advise it. The hotels are being searched for rebel sympathisers and many arrests are being made. Emotions have been aroused and matters are a little out of hand. You would be wiser to remain here.”

“Oh.”

“I can understand your reluctance to stay in this apartment a moment longer than is necessary, but in your own interests it is better that you do.”

“Yes. All right.”

“There are troops in this building. There is much to be done here. But you will not be disturbed. I have given strict orders. By the morning, perhaps …”

“Yes, of course. It’s good of you to come and tell us yourself.”

He hesitated. It was clear that he was desperately tired, but he also seemed ill at ease, even embarrassed. I wondered why.

“Mr. Fraser,” he said, “I may not have the opportunity of seeing you again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You, I think, will soon be leaving Selampang.”

“If the police haven’t lost my passport in the confusion.”

“Should you have difficulties, Lim Mor Sai will arrange matters for you. If you will mention that I suggested that he should.”

“Thank you. I was forgetting he was a friend of yours. Will you be going back to Tangga?”

“No. I believe that I am to be given other duties now.”

His face had become impassive, and I knew now what was troubling him. He was going to be promoted for his services to the Government, and he had a bad conscience. Aroff’s sneer about his treachery had hurt, and I had been there to hear it. He believed that in my heart I despised him. I wished that there were some way of telling him that I did not; and knew that there was no way that would not humiliate us both.

“Gedge will be sorry to hear that,” I said; “and so will the Transport Manager.”

He smiled sourly. “As Mr. Gedge will shortly be losing his other liaison managers also, perhaps he will feel compensated.” The smile went. “And now I regret that I must go.”

“Major, I wish that I could begin to thank you …”

He broke in hastily. “Please, Mr. Fraser, no thanks. We are both civilised and-what was your word? — humane men. Are we not? Yes. I will wish you, as I wished you the other day in Tangga, a safe journey and a happy future.”

“Thank you.”

He gave Rosalie a curt little bow, and then went back through the living room to the passage door. I followed. As he opened the door, I held out my hand.

“Goodbye, Major.”

His handshake was limp; a perfunctory concession to European manners.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Fraser.”

He went. There was another officer waiting for him in the passage.

I shut the door and bolted it. Then, I walked back through the living room and stood for a moment looking round at the litter and wreckage and filth on the terrace. Where Roda and Sanusi had died there were two large stains, congealed, glistening, and black in the moonlight.

I went over and sat down by Rosalie.

“Do you mind very much that we have to stay here?”

“Now that I am not so worried for my sister, it does not matter.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Not any more.”

“Would you like a drink?”

She shook her head. “Do you think that we could have baths?”

“There should be enough water for you.”

“For both of us if we use the water carefully. I will show you.”

“All right.”

So we bathed, pouring the water carefully over one another so that none was wasted, soaping ourselves, and then each rinsing the other. And gradually, as we stood there in the warm darkness, our bodies began to come alive. Nothing was said. We had not touched. We could not see. Yet both of us knew suddenly that it was happening to the other as well. For a moment or two we stood there motionless, each listening to the other’s breathing. It became intolerable. I put out my hands and touched her. She drew in her breath sharply; and then her body pressed with desperate urgency against mine.

I picked her up and carried her along the terrace. Somewhere in the wreckage of the bedroom there was a bed. Later, when our bodies had celebrated their return to life and the smell of death had gone, we slept.