A
ll day before the natives left, the tension of their concealment and of his betrayal began to lift from him. They were blameless: yet he longed for them to be gone. That evening he found them still crouched in their grass and shadows, but when he sat beside the old man, there seemed nothing left to say. The girl did not look at him. And he perceived her differently now. He was uneasily conscious of her every movement, of her body”s weight under the torn dress, even the shifting of her woman”s hands. Neither he nor the old man spoke of her.
Rayner reminded him of his pill regimen: the bromide tablets were in the girl”s bag. It was futile to pretend that the native might return for treatment. Then at dusk, just before she left for the nightclub, Zoë brought out a coral bracelet which the girl had liked, and fastened it round her wrist. The girl gave a little cry, and flickered her arm back and forth in delight. Almost for the first time, she laughed: a soft, high sound like a bird trilling.
Beyond the gate, as Rayner went out, a man was reading a broadsheet under the street lamp. But by the time
Rayner returned from reconnoitering the road, he had gone, and the last light had drained from the sky. It was time to leave.
The car which Rayner shared with Leszek was a sturdy, anonymous saloon, whose improvised blinds shadowed its interior even by day. Seated side by side in the back, and obscured by straw hats, the two natives looked indistinguishable from farmers. But the girl sat bolt upright, paralyzed. She had not travelled in a car since their days on the stock farm, the old man said. As they started, she gazed transfixed. The needles wavered over the dashboard; the headlights threw weak blobs into the dark, and the streets began to unfurl in a placeless network of bungalows. There was no one to be seen; and no car followed. A few lit windows hung up in the dark. Once or twice a guard dog rose snarling from a garden.
Then, as they neared the town center, stucco walls reared up and narrowed into alleys. The car”s engine roared and echoed. Its headlights wobbled over flaking façades violent with graffiti. But the natives could not read. Once they steered down a gauntlet of farmers” wagons where lights and singing rose from makeshift tents and whole families sprawled asleep among their salvaged clothes and trussed poultry. A man lurched drunk from his cart into the headlights, jolting the car to a standstill. His face came up angry against the glass close to the natives, then dropped away uncomprehending.
“I”ve locked the doors,” Rayner said. “They can”t get in.” He could not tell if the natives” immobility and silence were due to fear.
They emerged into open space and skirted the Municipality, where a pasteboard clock face announced the times for public water use, then they crossed at last to the town”s far side. Only two cars passed them, and a military jeep; and once the flashlights of a patrol overlapped the pavement as if to flag them down, but withdrew.
The street lamps petered out. Beyond the roofs a profile of foothills showed blacker than the sky. The old man looked up and murmured. For the first time Rayner felt confident they would leave the town unscathed. They entered a district of warehouses: compounds of barbed wire whose gates were padlocked and barricaded. A posse of vigilantes spilled from a side road and stared at them in confusion. They branched down an inconspicuous street then moved forward without lights. A few minutes later the buildings stopped dead and the tarmac turned to dust. They heard nothing. The place was too obscure to be overseen by an army post. On one side was a gentle swell of hills, on the other lay wilderness, and above them there opened up an uneven furnace of stars, which faintly lit the track ahead.
Rayner switched on the headlights again. “You”ll tell me where to stop?”
“I know the place. Is not far.”
The track could not have been used for months. The wheels purled along an artery of sand and tiny, reddish stones, and rustled over dying thorns. But in the wilderness ahead of them flickered a horizon of broken fires, so distant that their flaring and dimming seemed indistinguishable from stars. How did people live out here? There seemed to be nothing but saltbush and acacia, and sometimes the white trunks of eucalyptus trees glimmered like planted bones.
But Rayner sensed the natives quicken behind him. They were coming home. Their straw hats were gone and their faces, each shadowed in its canopy of coarse hair, had come alive, and were watching. They exchanged short, quick sentences. Whatever happened in the old man”s body, Rayner thought, he would feel better here.
By now they seemed to have been travelling a long time, and the path had almost faded. Sometimes the headlights scattered groups of gazelles, and once they came upon a file of long-horned cattle standing asleep across
the track. A kilometer beyond, the blackened shell of a farmhouse appeared. And beyond that, nothing.
A few minutes later, where a cairn of stones marked the way, the old man said, “Now we go footwalking.”
They clambered out into a sudden hush. On one side the foothills showed stark; on the other was wilderness. The air shrilled with cicadas and the sky was awash with stars. They stood awkwardly together. Rayner did not know how to say goodbye. He might have clasped the girl”s hand, but her arms circled the quilt and water bottles, and she was already gazing along the hills where they would go.
The old man lingered by the car door, but his body seemed less a burden to him now. His breathing filled it. He was fumbling inside his shirt, and at last pulled out a necklace of mussel shells which he thrust against Rayner”s chest. In the dark of his face and of the night, Rayner saw his smile gleam. He realized that he would miss him. He even experienced the unaccountable sensation that the savage had always been with him, but was now going away. The mussel shells glimmered in his hands. He had nothing left to say. But he reached out and took the old man in his arms.
As the natives moved out of sight, following the lea of the foothills, Rayner wondered how far they would have to go. They seemed to be walking into nothingness. Their slow, private dignity no longer struck him as strength, but as a kind of melancholy, and the two dark shapes merging with the plain looked suddenly vulnerable.
R
ayner had anticipated his aunt”s letter for so long that when he returned from work next evening and found it, he was seized by apprehension that it would not contain what he had hoped.
Written in a faltering parody of her old hand, her words dropped to him out of another realm. The arrangements for transferring her house to him were almost complete, she wrote, and she hoped he could meet her lawyers soon. His temporary residence permit was enclosed. She did not know how he regarded his future, but her friend Dr. Morena was seeking a junior partner, and she had made bold to mention Rayner”s name. She thought the partnership a pleasant one, and the indefinite extension of his permit would only be a formality. She imagined that Rayner would not lightly give up his present, thriving practice, but perhaps he would write to her? She had less than six months to live.
He read the letter again then folded it into his shirt pocket. This old woman, whom he scarcely remembered, had in his eyes acquired magical status. A frail, dying lady in bombazine and a toque hat—yet one push of her bony
hand, and the wall of government control had gaped open. How had it happened so simply? Perhaps the network of state repression was loosening at last, and he had not known.
He walked light-headed in the garden. The torrid summer had hammered it into a rectangle of brown. Even the hibiscus hung prematurely withered. But October was near, and perhaps the autumn rains, and in the darkening air a gasp of breeze sprang up and died. Outside the back door, the natives” departure had left a crescent of crushed grass. Inside, Zoë had cleared away the cinders from a charred circle in the rug, and a column of soot still radiated to the ceiling.
It was Zoë who concerned him now. The sun had set, and in an hour she would return. He went into the kitchen, found some bread and fruit, and waited for her. His elation contracted inside him. He suddenly resented his own passion for her. For years he had dreamed of his return, and now it was darkened by this violent, wayward love for a woman who had abandoned any wish to return herself. And he dreaded his own pity, his regret. She”d known from the start that he intended to leave; but he”d told her one thing with his mind, and another with his body. They had never talked of marriage, yet despite everything it had hovered in his thoughts. He had the idea that if he”d known her in another place, perhaps as a young girl in the capital, then they might have made a future. But now, in her earthiness and stormy disenchantments, she belonged here.
He could not take her back with him.
Then he became alarmed by his own fear of loss. It welled up inside him like nausea. He tried not to think of her. He hated his own weakness, if that is what it was. He realized, even in the kitchen, how his surroundings had become hers: the choice of food, the herbs, the fruit baskets, the capricious cat. He kept his eyes on his meal. He tried to avoid his own sorrow by thinking of her future.
He could not envisage it. She was only twenty-eight; yet often people were overawed by her. Her exuberance and naturalness attracted them, but there was something else—mercurial and perversely independent—which fended them off.
As the door opened, he could not anticipate her mood. It always played on her face, and was governed by the reactions of that coarse audience to her dancing. But tonight her eyes were on him. “You”ve had good news.”
“How did you know?”
“You”re looking guilty.”
Then he told her. He told her about his aunt”s illness and that he”d soon return to see her; and yes, he would accept the medical partnership, and the house. The opportunity would never come again.
As he spoke, his tone grew harsh against its own apology, and his gaze lifted from the table to her. But she had slowly turned away from him and was facing the blackwood dresser hung with crockery. She said, “I ought to be glad that you”ll be happy.” But the dresser clinked faintly, as if trembling under her hands.
“I don”t know about happiness.” He sounded strained and suddenly futile.
Then her gaze was on him. “So you”d desert the town and your practice for that place?”
He tried to retrieve his own harshness. “The town doesn”t need me. The October rains will be here soon, and then all this madness will fade away. If I could cure the disease, I”d stay. But I think it will cure itself.” He felt his voice falter and reached out to her, but she had turned her back again. “I think it”s benign.”
He was sick with himself. He had momentarily forgotten about the disease, her secret rash. He”d persuaded himself that the epidemic was transient. But he couldn”t know. He wanted to touch her, but guessed she would wrench away, so he went on sitting in front of his half-eaten
meal, which suddenly looked gluttonous. He said, “Leszek will be all right. He has two younger doctors wanting to join the practice.”
But Zoë”s back had hunched as if against a sandstorm, and in its thickened bulwark it seemed to hold all her dashed pride and growing resentment. Her anger was seeking a conduit, but had not found it. Not the town, no, nor Leszek. It was not them that he was so violently deserting. She said in a brimming voice, “Did you always know you”d leave me?”
“Yes.” The moment he said this he realized that it wasn”t quite true, but it seemed better not to tell her now.
“That must have been strange.”
Yes, he thought, strange and terrible. Yet while you were living the relationship, even with the prospect of eventual betrayal, it seemed natural. But he could not explain to her this waiting to return, this knowledge that completeness lay somewhere else. Zoë did not understand that kind of thing. He said, “You knew I”d go back to the capital. I always said so.”
She turned round now. Her face was gaunt. “I didn”t believe you”d go on preferring a place to a person.”
“It”s not just a place.” He despaired of explaining to her. He himself was beginning not to understand. When he asked himself,
Why? Why?
he was answered only by an immense, irrational yearning. He said, “It”s like being … whole again.” But her face was an angry blank. “It”s my past. I felt natural there.”
“Aren”t you natural with me?” she cried. “But I suppose the girls are better there, with their swanky clothes and accents.” She hovered above him trapped between fury and sadness. “I don”t understand you! When you”re with me, I feel you”re mine. But when you”re on your own, God knows what happens to you. I think you just forget. Do you? What happens?” Then her anger overflowed. “I think you just go cold, like a snake back in
water! You accuse this town of materialism, but why are you leaving it? Because you want a new job! And a grander house and a suitable girl!”
“I”m just going where I”ll feel committed. It”s a finer place than here.”
She said stubbornly, “I don”t remember that.”
“I do,” he said, “and if I could get you back there, I would.”
She almost shouted, “I don”t want the fucking capital! I want
you!”
Then, as if she too despaired of being understood, she turned cynical. He”d never heard her like this before. “That charming city! When I was last there they threw out all the prostitutes and dancers”—she executed an obscene pirouette in front of him—probably all the artists too, anybody who”d suffered anything, so they were left with the most
beautiful
city, full of children, I expect, with a few angels and mutes. You”ll
love
it …”
Rayner said cruelly, “You mock it because it rejected you—or you rejected it.”
“Oh
yes.
I wasn”t good enough for it. I had to be got rid of, like a germ. Now that I”ve been gone ten years, it must be
ever
so pure.”
But when he looked up at her expression, Rayner saw a familiar desperation: her ferocity against herself, the conviction of her inner worthlessness. And in this moment of disclosure he realized that she did, in some part of her, want to return, but could not, and he was racked by guilt and sadness. He was abandoning her, diseased, to a failing job in a fear-ridden community.
“But Zoë …” He wanted to tell her he did love her, but the words shook on his lips and would not come out. He had no right to tell her anything.
She glared at him and cried, “Don”t you bloody pity me!”
Then he reached out, pulling her against him, and kissed her mouth. She twisted it away from him, but he kissed her cheeks and hair, as if this was all that was left to him, and she slowly relaxed in his arms. Eventually she
murmured, “I”m all right, I”m all right,” but her voice strayed into trembling, then she sat on the floor and the tears coursed down her cheeks. He knelt beside her, rocking her, while she buried her face on his chest. He found himself repeating like a prayer, “If only you could join me,” but she simply answered, “What would I do there?”
For several minutes they sat together without talking, exhausted. The cat came and curled itself round them. Zoë said, “When will you go?”
He steeled himself. “In a couple of days. I”ll be back in two weeks … to clear things up.”
“So quick.” She ran her fingers over the cat”s fur with a little broken laugh.
Then her head returned to his chest and he could sense, rather than hear, the renewal of her weeping, like a deep, sighing storm, which shook her body with regular convulsions, whose epicenter lay far inside. It was as if she were crying not only for him but for her broken past, her lost parents, her dead child. He had no way left to comfort her. He was numbed by the depth of her grief.
She whispered, “Damn you.” He cradled her against him. Sometimes she might have been asleep but for the clenching and unclenching of her fingers in his shirt. He wondered how soon she would resurrect, but as he did so she became two women in his mind. The vibrant, dancing Zoë, he thought, would revive tomorrow. But the one in his arms, whose face had been thinned away by tears, the one without self-belief, she might not exactly recover at all, but store him away in the pantheon of her failures, as proof of her valuelessness. When he tried to see her future, he could not. It even crossed his mind that she might return to Ivar. And he could not predict how much—over how long a span—he would yearn for her.
He asked, “What will you do?” as if she might somehow change course.
“I suppose I”ll go on in that place, dancing.” Then she added, “But you won”t be there.” She seemed to have to
remind herself of this, cruelly, out loud. “I expect I”ll start to hate it, remembering what you thought of it. If only there were windows down there. But there”s no light. And it”s true, they”re pathetic, those girls, Felicie and the rest. They”re ill half the time, all just hoping for a break one day, a decent man, or any man. There”s not one of them happy. But they seem to need me, and I try to like them …”
She was talking of her loneliness, but too proud to give it that name.
“I”m sorry.” He”d never heard her speak so sadly of her work.
“If you were sorry, you”d stay.” She said it bleakly, drained of resentment. Just a fact. Then she stood up. “I”m going home.”
The word “home,” as she spoke it, was filled with a bitter self-comforting. “Home” before had always meant here.
“You shouldn”t go back alone.”
“Who”s going to bother me?” She tried to joke. “An old woman with a cat.” Her voice choked. “Better leave me alone. I
am
alone.”
Rayner watched her pick up her bag and the cat, then hesitate, as if these were too few, and there was something she had forgotten.
Then she left.