H
ow long the staff car had been waiting outside the clinic Rayner could not guess. The corporal had covered its dashboard with a blanket against the sun and fallen asleep inside. As they drove into the barracks he said, “It was the captain wanted you,” and he pulled up outside the military police jail.
Ivar met Rayner in the warder”s room. He was wearing a look of complicitous charm, and took Rayner”s arm as if to lead him aside—but there was nowhere aside to go. There had been an unfortunate occurrence, he said. One of their prisoners—an elderly savage—had died of heart failure. The surgeon had carried out a postmortem, but they needed a second signature on the Notification of Death form. It was routine, of course. He pushed the form across the desk until it lay under Rayner”s eyes, then began to talk of other things. His relationship with Felicie was unexpectedly better, he said. And how was Zoë? Yes, she was certainly characterful. In fact you never knew which of her characters she was going to adopt next. This did make her … well …
difficult …
The Notification of Death still lay on the desk beside
Rayner”s hand, with one of Ivar”s pens beside it. Against “Cause of Death,” it read, “Cardiac Arrest.” Rayner wondered: is he really expecting me to sign it without question?
“But of course Zoë is bright …” Ivar”s smiles and laughter came and went, yet somehow made no difference to his face. It was as if his face were temporarily missing. Except that once or twice its eyes flickered down to the form, encouraging Rayner to pick up the pen.
In the end Rayner said, “We”d better get on with the inspection, then.”
“Will that be necessary?”
“I can”t sign an autopsy for a corpse I”ve never seen!”
“Of course not.” Ivar stood up. His smile was faintly disconcerted. “I”m not familiar with the procedures.” Rayner realized, with surprise, that Ivar wanted his esteem. “And the surgeon is absent at the moment.”
He led the way down a short passage and opened an iron door. The Intelligence lieutenant materialized behind them. Rayner found himself in a room which must once have been a cell. It reeked of chlorine. The body lay on a table in a linen sack. The lieutenant untied and eased back the cloth from the head and shoulders. “He died about twelve hours ago.”
The man was no more than forty-five years old. His closed eyes made two dark-lashed crescents on his flat face. From the high cheekbones his features tapered to the natives” soft mouth and a tiny, withdrawn chin. It was an oddly humorous face, rather delicate. Its lines of pain—if that is what they had been—were all smoothed away. At any moment, it seemed, the eyes might fly open and the mouth crinkle into laughter.
Rayner pulled the sack from the naked body. The lieutenant fidgeted on the far side. Ivar stood behind Rayner, with the Notification in his hand. Rayner recognized no obvious sign of heart failure—the feet were unswollen—and there was no incision. He began to feel angry. How
this native had died had been decided irrelevant. As for him, he was being enrolled as the army”s pawn.
He asked, “How did the surgeon arrive at his diagnosis?”
The lieutenant answered smoothly, “I”m not sure.” Ivar said, “The man collapsed in his cell early in the night.”
It was difficult to detect bruising on the dark skin, but it appeared to Rayner that the whole region beneath the rib cage was heavily contused. A discoloration blacker than the natural skin tone spread unevenly down to the man”s crotch. It looked as if he had been systematically hit.
“How did this happen?”
For an instant the lieutenant looked confused, then his gaze followed Rayner”s finger and he stooped down to stare. He said, “He got into a fight with another prisoner.” But when Rayner looked at the lieutenant the watchful eyes and ambiguous lips no longer expected to be believed. They seemed simply to be saying,
Even if you don”t cooperate, we”ll
do as we”ve decided.
Then, when Rayner ran his hands over the native”s skull, he encountered beneath the thick hair a sudden bulge. The skin was almost unbroken, but the tissue had thickened into a hard swelling ten centimeters across. And the surgeon had not even shaved his head.
Rayner straightened up. On either side, Ivar and the lieutenant had stiffened into silence. He said, “I thought your man had performed an autopsy.”
“He didn”t think it necessary,” the lieutenant said.
The Notification of Death rustled in Ivar”s hand, but his smile had faded back into an expression of plastic concern. Rayner felt suddenly tired. If he didn”t sign the form, it would make no difference. They would merely forge the papers, or suppress the death altogether. On the bare table the native”s flared nostrils and soft mouth kept their hint of whimsical humor. But the frail-looking body accused him. He said: “This needs a proper postmortem
—something I”m not qualified to carry out. The abdominal bruising could mean a ruptured spleen or several other causes of death. Most likely, in my opinion, he died from a fractured skull. So we need X-rays.”
Ivar said, “That won”t be possible.”
It was futile, Rayner knew, to argue. He said, “Then there”s nothing more I can do.” He turned and opened the door behind him.
Then Ivar touched his forearm, smiling, with the familiar gesture which claimed old friendship, and handed him the Notification of Death form. For a moment the flagrancy of this so astonished Rayner that he took it. But in his erupting anger the treatment of the native and of himself were inextricably joined. He laid the form on the table beside the corpse”s feet, and saw his pen tremble as it wrote in thick, jagged words: “Cause of death: Cerebral contusion consequent on a head wound.”
Ivar took the form, and his smile vanished. The lieutenant was dragging the linen sack back over the body. Ivar said, “You”re making things more difficult for us.”
“You”ve made them impossible for me!”
Ivar began pacing back and forth in front of him, the few steps which the cramped room allowed. He appeared to be contemplating something, but perhaps just hated to concede defeat in front of the lieutenant, who was tying the neck of the bag in a neat double bow. It was only after the subaltern had left, closing the door which Rayner had opened, that Ivar said, “I hoped at a time like this you would realize there was something more important than medical etiquette.”
Rayner said bitterly, “I thought murder was what we were fighting against.”
But Ivar had turned cold. Rayner had the impression that his uniform had leaked upwards, into his face, and was slowly suffocating it. “We”re fighting for the peace of this town, perhaps even for its survival.”
“That”s hyperbole.”
“Is it?” Ivar smiled just as he had done at school, when his secret knowledge turned everyone else stupid. “We”ve received reports of armed savage bands numbering as many as fifty.”
“Then why don”t you cope with them,” Rayner demanded, “instead of …”—he waved one hand at the sack—”this?”
“Because when we hunt them they scatter. That makes Intelligence vital.”
“What can they tell you? These people all come from different regions.” Rayner tried to remember what the old native had told him. “A few may be marauders, but the ones who drift into town probably come from other groups.”
Ivar said, “In that case they know each other”s movements remarkably well. Several have admitted to a plot to infiltrate and sack the town.”
“Was that suggested to them under interrogation?”
“I don”t know. Interrogation isn”t my job. But the lieutenant”s not a fool.”
Rayner turned his back on the shape in the sack, as if it might be listening. “People will admit to anything under torture. Just to stop the pain.”
“Nobody said anything about torture. Do you think I”d order it?”
Then Rayner realized that Ivar was angry—or as close as he could reach anger. His eyes had awoken in a controlled glitter. Perhaps this was no more than the simulated fury of army officers at insubordination, Rayner thought, yet even that suggested some discomfort in him, so that Rayner found himself thinking: he”s vulnerable after all. Nobody on earth could be quite certain of himself.
It occurred to Rayner that the lieutenant had covered the corpse again on purpose: it would be harder to lie in its presence. He said, “This man was beaten systematically.
The heart attack attributed by your surgeon is pure fantasy.”
They were no longer facing either the corpse or one another, but staring at the cell wall three feet away. It had been thinly whitewashed over indecipherable graffiti. After a silence Ivar said, “I don”t think you care about this town. You”ve never felt any loyalty to us.”
His words threatened Rayner with all the certainty, the enclosed authority, of his own class and kind. That was their power.
“I care all right,” Rayner snapped. “At least enough to hate this place losing its head.” And he thought at once, a little surprised, that yes, he did care about the town, about his friends and certain patients, about Zoë, even about the place”s blind future.
Ivar said, “But you betray it.” He edged the death notice into his inner pocket, slowly, as if giving Rayner a last chance to recant. “You haven”t changed, have you? You always did find some reason for being separate.” The words debarred Rayner absolutely, just as they had at school. He imagined his name appended to the Intelligence list of unreliable elements. “It”s easier for you to dissociate yourself,” Ivar went on, “because you feel you don”t belong here. You keep this pipe dream of returning to the capital. But people like me have to cope with the realities. It”s rough going, but we do the best we can. We can”t afford your morality. It doesn”t work here.”
Rayner turned on him. “You accuse me of idealism because I don”t abet a murder! I don”t have any morality I can lay my hands on, just hand-to-mouth decency. And sometimes not even that. I”ve never stuck even to medical etiquette. I”ve practiced euthanasia like most doctors with a grain of pity in them.” He saw his own hands trembling; he stuffed them into his pockets. “But I won”t sign that form.”
Ivar looked at him as if at a baffling child, then turned
his back, but found himself facing the corpse in its linen envelope. Again he seemed to be seeking self-exculpation as he said, “These people aren”t like us. They don”t think like us. They don”t share our sense of right and wrong. They—”
Rayner shouted, “But they feel like us if you fracture their skulls!” He just wanted Ivar to stop talking, wanted the plastic mouth to stop going up and down, planting its rational syllables in his mind. It was Ivar”s calm which was so dangerous, he thought, so insidious.
And it was true in its way, of course, the natives were different. When they came into contact with whites they fell instant prey to alcohol or disease. Yet out there in the wilderness they slipped back into collusion with something else, and appeared to live and die as if they did not profoundly matter. They did not battle with life as the whites did. So they stayed backward, and were peculiarly still. They seemed to retain some secret which later peoples had lost. He remembered the paintings on the rock face, their disembodied peace; but whether they imagined a future or portrayed a past, was impossible to say.
The echo of Rayner”s shouting died in the tiny cell. It left behind a solid wall between him and Ivar, probably forever. Before, the difference between them had been inarticulate, or the subject of banter. But now it had reared up with inescapable meaning.
Ivar opened the door, gently dismissing him, and said, “None of this alters your obligation to the army if you”re called on.”
It must have been Ivar”s blandness, his imperturbable civility, which made it impossible to sustain anger with him for long. Rayner left the cell without answering, or looking back. As the staff car moved out of the barracks, he was disgusted to realize that his dominant feeling was regret for the loss of an old friendship.
T
hat evening, as he walked home along the deserted river, he saw that the wreckage from the army raid still scattered the bank, as if nobody had been there since last night. But the last of the savages had gone. Their campfires had died to soft anthills of pure ash, or were smeared in a grey dust where the print of boots and bare feet overlapped. A torn blanket dangled from a branch. Some cooking pots gleamed under a bush. And once he came upon a necklace of tiny bones, broken, like vertebrae on the red earth.
In the clinic, when he had told Leszek that the army had tortured a man to death, his old partner had turned cold with recognition and said at once, “Now you must see, don”t you? You must tell that savage and the girl to go. You”ve done everything you can.”
“His blood pressure still swings over 210. He trembles all the time. If I let him go, he”ll die out there.”
But Leszek only said, “Better than dying in prison”—and the memories blanching his face lent him a cruel authority.
By now Rayner was obsessed by the two natives. For
all he knew the army would seize them that night. An hour later, on the way to the hospital, he met the local priest, a stout man with frosty eyes, and told him that the military had cleared the river of savages, and what was he to do about his patient?
“In my experience these people are not converted by kindness,” the priest said.
“I”m not trying to convert them.”
“But judging by their actions, it”s wrong and dangerous to harbor them. They”re better among their own kind.”
In the hospital Rayner had approached the senior consultant warily, but the man had realized with a shock what he was asking. “That”s preposterous, Rayner! I”d no idea they were still there! You”re not only jeopardizing your own standing in the town, but that of the whole medical profession.” He had looked at Rayner as Ivar sometimes did, baffled and incredulous. Rayner began to feel he was going mad. The consultant demanded, “How many people do these savages have to murder before you repudiate them?”
He passed a sodden quilt on the riverbank, and a torn sandal; then he started to climb toward his house. Far to his left stood the copse of acacia and bloodwood trees where the natives were camped. He glared at it as he trudged up the slope. They would be sitting there, he knew, in their own impenetrable world, oblivious of the dilemma they were causing. He hunted for reasons to disown them, but found none. He prayed for them simply to leave. They were imposing on him an idiotic heroism or treachery. He might start to hate them. Yet he thought: this town”s going insane about a sick old man and a girl.
By the time he reached his villa he had no anger left, just a bleak indecision. Zoë”s cat was sitting under the porch in the fading sun. He turned into the garden to compose himself. The frangipani trees were dripping
waxen blossoms into the brown grass, and all the canna lilies were in bloom.
After a while Zoë came out. In her flowered dress, with her hair loosed, she looked like the natural child of the place. But as she approached him her smile faded. “What”s wrong?”
He took her hand and began to walk. “The army have just killed one of the native prisoners. They asked me to falsify the postmortem, and I refused.”
“Ivar?”
“Not personally, I don”t think. It was the Intelligence fellows. My guess is the man fought back under torture and they killed him by mistake.” He stopped under the frangipanis, whose fall of flowers seemed somehow shocking now. “There”s not a native free in the whole town except the old man and the girl, and the soldiers may come for them any time. The old fellow wouldn”t last a day in prison. It”d be torture enough to separate him from his daughter. And she”d be raped.” He kicked at the hard earth. “But he”s still so weak that if I send them away I can”t guess his chances. He might survive, but he”d probably die.”
He turned to face her. Suddenly he realized how deeply, by laying this dilemma at her feet, he had put her on trial. He was not even sure what he wanted her to reply. He just stared into her face, whose vivid eyes overruled all trouble in it.
She simply said, “Where shall we keep them?”
As he looked at her, standing under the milky trees, he was overswept by a boyish adoration. Quaintly he balanced her fingertips on his, and kissed them.
She laughed, startled. “What”s that for?”
“You.”
She stared back at him, puzzled. She did not notice that there had been any decision. “Well, where?”
“I don”t know. They should probably be in the back
bedroom. It”s sheltered from the road. We”ll find them the moment it”s dark.”
They stepped into the villa as if they were treading on glass. The huge, halting man followed the expressionless girl across the sitting room to the far door. His whole frame trembled faintly as if it were independent of him, of the life sunk deep inside. Like a mariner between islands, he faltered from table to chair to window ledge, but touched their surfaces only tentatively, as if testing their existence. “You got a good place here, eh.” He held out a hand to Zoë. “You Mrs. Doctor?” “I”m a friend.”
She showed them the kitchen. The girl stood behind her father, uncomprehending. But the man said, “I remember these things from the cattle station days. I work these things okay, I explain to the girl.”
“But you tell us what you eat,” Zoë said. “We”ll buy the food.”
“Is okay for now. We got the flour. Some fruit. White-feller stuff make harder eating for us.”
The moment they entered the bedroom they went to the window and looked out into the dark of the garden. They murmured together. The trees seemed to comfort them. When the old man turned, he picked experimentally at the coverlets, the curtains, the cushions, but said nothing. His daughter did not seem to see them.
“If you go out,” Rayner said, “don”t go beyond the trees.”
The girl spread their quilt on the floor and squatted down. From her cord bag she drew out a long dish packed with tubers, two little bark spoons and a bone knife. Rayner watched her in fascination. She might have been alone. He had the impression that because for thousands of years her people had experienced only the wilderness and one another, a white face scarcely registered with her, and did not meaningfully exist. After a minute he and Zoë
realized not that their own presence was intrusive but that they were simply no longer being seen, and they closed the door softly behind them.
But late that night Rayner was woken by something. He eased out of bed without disturbing Zoë. He heard the stutter of a distant motor, then nothing. As he parted the curtains and stared down at the river, he made out the dimmed lights of an army patrol among the trees. They went in utter silence, furtively. He watched as their lamps rose diagonally up the slope and passed before the house without a sound. Then they dwindled along the crest of the ridge toward the bloodwood copse. As he gazed, they vanished and reemerged where the slope met the skyline, then one by one they disappeared.
During the following week the natives were so quiet in the house that Rayner often forgot they were there. All day, with scarcely a change of posture, they would rest on their haunches in the grass outside the back door, facing the trees. Sometimes the old man would doze off like this, bolt upright, his eyebrows descended like pelmets almost onto his cheeks. Occasionally Rayner would find him smoking hemp leaves in a little bamboo pipe, perforated like a flute. At first he moved to stop this, then let him dream in peace.
Meanwhile the girl squatted beside her father, weaving a basket out of pandanus fiber, or simply sat idle with her head faintly inclined to his. She never used the kitchen. Instead she built a cooking fire just inside the door. Neither she nor her father questioned the circular hole it burnt in the rug, but pulled their seed-cakes from its embers and sometimes offered Rayner a sweet fruit paste which they blended over its flames. In their room the beds and chairs were ignored, and they never touched an electric switch. Every dusk they unrolled their soiled quilt over the floor and slept back to back with their hair flared out around headrests improvised from the garden stones.
Yet they slept fitfully. Through the villa”s papery walls Rayner heard their sudden words and cries. It was as if the stress which they denied by day was experienced in their dreams. Sometimes he felt it was in dreams that their real lives were lived, and that in daytime they merely waited.
The old man grew visibly robuster in these first few days, and even the girl began woodenly to acknowledge her surroundings. Whenever Rayner saw her she smiled at him, but the smile was superposed on her face: she had copied it from her father. It flashed on and off. And when their eyes met, her gaze no longer dropped, but held Rayner”s in a blank, unfathomable stare: just a pair of eyes, looking.
Rayner felt a premature sadness for her, because she might soon be alone, but his pity was impaired by her enigma, by the apparent absence of any person in her, and besides, she was not a girl any longer but a young woman. She had the long, veined feet and hands of her people, already refined, and her breasts pushed against the white dress. She knew no language but her own, yet Zoë befriended her with chatter—”She must understand
something”
—and brought her different fruits and cakes, which were sometimes eaten and sometimes set aside.
Only the presence of the cat altered her expression. Then the knot of native unease flickered between her eyes, and when Zoë held the creature out to her she darted back in dismay. She did not understand what the cat was for. As Zoë fondled it, smoothing the paws against her own neck, the girl watched in wonderment, as if the cat and the white woman had a secret pact together.
On the second day Zoë heard a scream from her bedroom. She looked in and saw the girl sitting in front of the dressing table with her hands lifted to her head. She had discovered herself in the mirror. Until today she had used only a square of tin in which to glimpse her face, but now she was confronted by the brilliant, life-size woman
who lived in reflection. She stared at her, awestruck. She steered her head from side to side, and pattered her fingertips over her cheeks. At last she realized that the woman would not suddenly do something on her own. Then, slowly, she unbuttoned the top of the torn dress, slipped it down from her shoulders and gazed at her reflected breasts. She laughed.
Now that in the town”s eyes the two natives had drifted from Rayner”s protection and back into the wilderness, he felt that people”s stares were no longer on him (but perhaps they never had been). Yet the natives” presence in the house confirmed how little he understood them. They were not only different from the town”s conception of its enemy, and from the axe-men of his own fear, but they were different from one another. The old man”s years of stock breeding had touched him with the white man”s world. But the girl was a repository of her people”s mystery. She existed free of any values he knew.
These days the town”s anger and helplessness were palpable in the humid streets. Men shouldered their way to work as if the community”s survival depended on it. Police and passing soldiers were routinely harangued. And the mood infected both the vigorous and the passive, depending on their fear.
From a long way away, as he returned from his rounds, Rayner glimpsed the elegant head of Felicie approaching along the mall. He expected her to flutter a hand at him and pass on, but instead her fists landed on his chest in a childish tattoo, and she drove him into a shop entrance. How could he have done that to Ivar, she demanded? Didn”t he owe loyalty? Or else what was the point of old friends? With the town in the state it was, why couldn”t he cooperate? He must take pleasure in sabotage, she concluded. He must want them all to go under. Otherwise, why?
Rayner said, “The man had been murdered.”
“Ivar said he hadn”t,” Felicie panted. “And Ivar should know. Don”t you trust him?” “Not always.”
Her fists resumed their infantile thudding. “You”re his oldest friend!”
Rayner took her wrists and held her irritably away. “It doesn”t matter if I signed that death notice or not. The army would falsify it anyway.”
“Then why didn”t you do it?” Her head shook on its neck like a flower. “You”re just stubborn.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why?”
He pointed whimsically to his maimed foot. “Because I can”t run away.”
But Felicie refused to smile. She half screamed, “Don”t expect any loyalty from him!”
“I don”t.” But Rayner wondered if Ivar were planning some reprisal.
“Because he has every right to grind you into the earth!”
“He hasn”t any right to do anything. He just asked me to lie about a man”s death.”
Felicie was close to tears. Her bouffant hair sagged like sodden corn. “It”s all right for you. You get paid by the state. But we”re trying to run a business in this place, and everything was fine until now, just fine … until …”—her springing tears made her furious—”until these savages had to start this killing…. And
you
condone it. If this goes on the club will shut down. And what would happen to your precious Zoë then?”
But Felicie wasn”t looking into Zoë”s future, Rayner knew: she was looking into her own, and she saw nothing. He said curtly, “Zoë”s clever enough to get a job anywhere. She might start a new career.” Yet he could not imagine Zoë without her dancing. Her natural expression would be lost. So she was in the power of these people. “Are things really so bad?”
Felicie crumpled. “It”s empty half the evening, Zoë must have told you. People come in early and leave their guns against the walls like it was an armory, and go away by nine.” She shuddered. “The farmers only make it worse. They don”t even buy drinks, they just sit.”
She looked so abject, Rayner said, “It will come right again.” He glanced at the suffocating sky. “With the October rains.”
But as he went home, their conversation lingered uncomfortably with him. He wandered in the garden, breathing the faint, perpetual stench of bush fires, and at last came and sat beside the two natives. They were leaning forward a little, side by side, with their heartbreaking look of perplexity, saying nothing. They had perhaps been sitting like that all afternoon. The girl shot Rayner her confusing smile, then went indoors. The old man said, “Nothing changed, eh?”