As his stick withdrew, Rayner saw that he had outlined a tall stump, like a phallus: some early object of worship, perhaps. But even in the crude medium of dust, his shaking hand had invested it with nervous, quivering lines.
Rayner said, “Are you feeling unwell?”
“I get bad from the hot heat.” The man spread his hand over his chest. “And sometimes in my left eye, if I looking at my hand, I see two hands, one top, one bottom.” He did not try this. “But I”m okay most days. My daughter gets medicine grass and sometimes whitefeller stuff. I”ve been lucky in my living, not like some.”
He became silent. Rayner went on hearing the clack-clack of the loom. Through the hut opening, beyond the girl”s back, he glimpsed their possessions: a skin rug, some articles of western clothing, and in the center, incongruously beautiful, the carved headrests on which these mysterious people slept. At the girl”s feet were a few bowls of roots and tubers, and a little beyond, exorcised of any threat, a short-handled axe.
Rayner wondered what the girl would do after her father had died. He badly wanted to give them something.
He felt suddenly, illogically grateful to them—simply for their difference, their enigma. But as he got to his feet he realized he had nothing useful to give.
He took the old man”s arm. “Next time you”re in the town, you come and see me. I”m a doctor.” He printed out his address on a scrap of paper. “You show this to people, they”ll tell you where to come.”
The man laid the paper flat on the palm of his hand, then turned without a word into the hut.
Rayner scrambled up the slope to his car. It was already dusk. The wilderness seemed to be sucking the light out of the sky. As he drove back, the lamps of the mines ascended in front of him in constellations of white and amber, and the mammoth smelting chimney, picked out in red against the stars, still spread its waste in a long, fine dust across the night.
R
ayner found himself saying things to Zoë which he had never intended. Often when they were together her stare fell on him like a vivid but innocent searchlight, and he was touched by a kind of impetuous tenderness. They had slept with one another after only their second evening together, and within two weeks, a little bewildered at himself, he had asked her to join him on holiday. It was the animal exuberance of her, he thought, which was so elating, mixed with an intangible sense of suffering. Her vitality struck him as a kind of courage. For all her frankness, he felt he did not know her.
He chose the town”s most sophisticated resort—a lake in the northern hills—because he imagined that she was urban. But during their few days” holiday neither of them entered the little casino or nightclub, and it was she who sank into a dream by the water, and seemed physically to imbibe its colors and changes. For hours she would paddle along the shore in one of his shirts and a straw hat, then lie spreadeagled on a rock under the flailing sun, with her hair swept over her face. She said that it reminded her of home, and certainly the lake was so
huge—on hazy days the farther shore vanished altogether—that it resembled some tideless stretch of the north coast where she was born.
There was nothing like it for hundreds of kilometers. Through the naked hills it lay in a sheet of brilliant blue, death-still. Under its near slopes, fed by small streams, the littoral burst into a rain forest of mangrove and silkwood trees, where parasite ferns ran amok and hundreds of pale trunks leaned askew. The resort”s villas were nestled privately among them along a near-empty beach. Even in June it was silent. Out on the water only a few transparent-looking islands interposed themselves between the shore and the far hills, and occasional flights of duck gashed the surface.
Rayner usually avoided such resorts. During the Great War the place had been reserved for the local government élite and senior army and intelligence officers. Now it was patronized by executives and businessmen. After a day dispersed along the shore or among the islands, they converged on the dining room with their wives or mistresses, and the place became a microcosm of the town. It drank and danced and gossiped. To Rayner, who couldn”t dance and scarcely drank, all the place”s pleasure lay in Zoë. If any medical colleagues happened to be here, he decided, they could think what they liked. He was not ashamed of her. He felt proud, rather, of her public face: the slightly arrogant beauty of her, which seemed to be defying the world to uncover any weaker woman beneath. People in the town were so various now—the strata of the old society breaking up all over the country—that you”d expect nobody to trouble any longer about who consorted with whom. But you would, of course, be wrong. And the dining room by the lake was riddled with a cross fire of stares and inquisition.
So at evening, after their amphibious hours along the shore, they had to reenter the town”s orbit. Zoë prepared for this as if she were going to war. Sitting at her dressing
table, applying her fawn-colored foundation cream and diffusing over her eyelids the specks of rouge which mysteriously heightened her eyes” blue, she talked about creating her face as if none had been there before. Then came the matching lipstick and the small false eyelashes and the drawing-back of the hair from her highlit features. Without this, Rayner came to realize, she felt bared, whittled away. So each night she produced a version of herself which was at once emphatic, theatrical and a little poignant. He was reminded of the dancer who had gyrated on the nightclub stage, demanding recognition of herself, but only on her own terms.
“Do I look all right? I think I look a mess.” In the long mirror the girl could not decide, and turned to Rayner.
“You look good.”
Then her chin lifted and she walked down the plant-lapped path to the dining room with a trace still of the ballerina”s turned-out step, and her hand on Rayner”s arm. As they threaded between tables toward one overlooking the lake, and people turned to assess them, Rayner felt bemused that her fear of crowds and her defiance of them went hand in hand. Her way of coping was to re-create herself for them. It seemed neurotically brave.
A three-piece orchestra was playing Glinka and Borodin on a dais, and a few couples were dancing. The women”s hair was stuck with the little gold combs fashionable that year. The men”s white dinner jackets were buttoned tight at the waist, and a few were still stitched with campaign ribbons from the Great War twenty years ago, when the nation was a colony.
Already Zoë”s high spirits were discovering a humorous variety show in the people near them when somebody called out, “Rayner!”
Her heart must have sunk as his did. She said, “Oh bloody hell. It”s Ivar and Felicie.”
They were sitting alone at a table for four, wanting company. Ivar spread out his arms in amused welcome. At
that moment his urbanity, his inability to be surprised by human affairs, came as a relief. He merely kissed them both perfunctorily and said, “How good to find friends!”
But Felicie flung her arms furiously around Zoë. “You cheat! You didn”t
tell
me.” She turned to Ivar. “She tells me she needs a holiday but never says
where
or
who with.”
“You never listen,” said Zoë.
Felicie said, “But I”d have listened to
that!”
So they settled at the table and lapsed into the ease of old friends. Their meal came and went, and they were left drinking the rough local wine from the hills. Rayner felt happy, and for the first time in years he drank too much. Felicie poured out news at Zoë as if they”d been parted six months, telling anecdotes, soliciting approval, and scattering all her chatter with reflex self-criticism. “I”m so forgetful, I … I”m so stupid, I … I …” Her voice fluted and piped. Rayner, watching from the corner of his eye, found the two laughably different. Mist-haired Felicie gave an illusion almost of transparency, while beside her Zoë was all color and bite. Several times it occurred to him that Felicie was some sort of ghost. In her irrecoverable loss of self, he thought, she was the person whom Zoë was refusing to become.
Ivar was saying, “I thought they”d have wanted you in town now.”
“You mean the disease?” Rayner shook his head. “We can”t treat it. We can pretend, of course, we always do. But basically we don”t know anything.”
Ivar said levelly, “You”ll be able to track it down in the end. How many cases are reported now? Eleven?”
“We”d be able to trace it better if we knew what it was. But we”ve taken blood and urine tests and come up with nothing at all. We”ve even X-rayed for cancer, but … nothing.”
“You think it”s infectious?”
“I don”t know. Nothing”s shown up in the blood.”
He said, “Well then, the people who”ve caught it can
be monitored. There must be some common factor.”
“They”re all sorts. Both sexes, old, young. Two are miners, one”s an optician. A bank clerk …” The school medical officer—Rayner”s amateur analyst—had even reported the rash on a child of six.
Ivar said, “How strange,” but he said it reluctantly, acknowledging only a temporary barrier which would soon be cleared away. That was typical, Rayner thought. Ivar had always spread this calm of logic and reasonableness about him, which left no place for the unknown. Now he added, “People say it”s a savage”s disease—even that they”re spreading it on purpose.”
“There”s no evidence for that!” It was maddening, Rayner thought, how Ivar could voice a piece of pure speculation, and in his measured tone the idea would take on sanity. Whereas Rayner, when he refuted it, sounded harshly precarious.
Ivar said, “I”d have thought it permissible, under the circumstances, to take in a few of the local savages for medical inspection.”
“It”d be harder to diagnose in natives than in anybody.” Rayner remembered the blotched torso of the old man at the holy site. “I think they generally suffer the opposite complaint. Skin depigmentation. And apart from discoloration the only symptoms are vague. Just a general malaise. And some patients complain of aching eyeballs.”
“Did you know,” Ivar said, “that during the last savage troubles fourteen years ago they systematically poisoned the town”s water supply?”
“I never heard that.”
“Well, they did—”
Felicie broke in, “Ivar thinks the savages are “racially inferior.” “ Her head wobbled like a flower. “Do
you?”
Rayner laughed (it seemed the only thing to do). “Genetics isn”t my subject.” But when he thought about the natives, he felt a confused disquiet. Between them and the whites there seemed to lie some absolute divide, as if
they inhabited another stratum of time. He said, “I suppose they”re inferior when they”ve had to adapt to our way. We”d be, if we had to adapt to theirs.”
He did not want to talk about it. Through a window behind Ivar”s back he saw that the moon had risen out of the hills. He wrenched himself to his feet and walked out onto the terrace. The wine had gone to his head. In front of him only the lake and the moon seemed to exist in the simplifying night. He even fancied that this was where the moon came from, out of the lake. He was reminded of the seacoast near the capital on other summer nights, of Miriam, of phosphorus water in the rock pools. The restaurants in the capital, he thought, did not have to strain for effect as this one did, with its pretentious chandeliers and fake leather upholstery.
Ivar had followed him out. “Felicie wasn”t joking,” he said. “I do think that. These people are radically different. You only have to look at the shape of their heads to see it. There simply isn”t enough room for a developed neocortex.”
Rayner chilled. Ivar, he”d noticed, was reading a manual called
Leadership Effectiveness.
He seemed to be mentally arming himself. To Ivar, knowledge must always have a purpose—Rayner remembered this from their schooldays. Everything was used, directed to an end. Nothing existed simply for itself.
Rayner said, “It”s not as simple as that.”
Ivar answered quite affectionately, “You always did complicate things.” He dropped his cigarette stub over the verandah. “But just look at Felicie”s head shape, for example. That”s the brain case of a sheep.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not in the least.” But he laughed. “This is the last holiday she and I take together. She”s an exceptionally pretty woman, don”t you think, but there”s too much I dislike in her, and I”ve no doubt she”d say the same about me.”
“There”s something desperate about her.”
“I”ll keep an eye on her after we”ve split up.”
Rayner watched Ivar”s face in the moonlight: the putty-like face in which nothing was memorable, except the bland balance of the whole. Yes, Ivar would keep an eye on Felicie. Rayner”s childhood memories of him were all of a premature adult, mocking a little, but kindly within limits: a man to whom cruelty would be a waste of energy.
He went on gazing at the moonstruck lake. His head was clearing, but not happily. If he had not known Ivar in childhood, he thought, they could never have become friends. Yet sometimes he felt irritated at his own inability to embrace life as Ivar did. Everything seemed to grate on him harder than on others—on these robust townspeople drinking and dancing behind him, their exile forgotten. Ivar and the town were right for one another, he thought. They were all ruled by a merciless common sense: whether in accepting a theory about the savages” inferiority (one of God”s slips, they would say) or the lot of the pathetic Felicie.
“Zoë will help her,” Rayner said. “I think she relies on Zoë.”
“Yes, she probably does.” Ivar turned quiet. “But you can”t rely on Zoë except in bursts.” He took Rayner”s arm, asserting their old friendship, its primacy over any later ones. “I”ve known Zoë several years, and she”s very self-willed, complex…. She”s a solitary.”
Perhaps Ivar was warning him against falling in love. But in some way, Rayner thought, Zoë had offended him.
“Don”t misunderstand me,” he went on. “She”s good looking, she”s intelligent…. On a six-day holiday she”ll be fine.” He gave a collusive laugh. “But then, she”s never the same …”
It was the first time Rayner had seen this look on Ivar”s face: perplexity. So he had failed to understand her.
Then Rayner felt a sudden distaste at them both standing here, talking about their temporary women. He
did not want to discuss Zoë any longer. But he could not resist asking, “How the hell did she land up in this town?”
“She”s always gone her own way. Her parents are decent people in the north, you know. Teachers. But she had to be different …”
Zoë and Felicie came out onto the terrace then, exclaiming at the moonlight and the men”s absence. They had twined jasmine in each other”s hair. Their laughter tinkled in the night. Anyone boating on the lake, Rayner thought, would have seen two glamorous young women carelessly on holiday with their men …
Behind them the band had struck up one of the syncopated dance tunes popular that year. In front, an isolated wind was interfering with the moonlight all over the lake. Felicie was walking unsteadily up and down the terrace, crooning to herself. Zoë, standing close to Rayner, had started listening for owls, and he was conscious of her hands resting beside him on the verandah stonework, their long fingers interlaced. Ivar came and stood beside them, his jacket hung carelessly over his arm.
Then Ivar reached out and covered Zoë”s hands with one of his. It was a broad hand, Rayner saw. A gold ring glinted on it. Ivar said, “Come and dance.”
There was something so assured, so proprietorial about the gesture, that Zoë”s reaction was the more shocking. Her hands darted from under his and bunched whitely at her waist. For a split second an abyss of vulnerability opened up in her. Then her anger covered her. For an instant Rayner saw her eyes flash down at his crippled foot, the one which could not dance, then up again at Ivar. Her hands were behind her back. She breathed, “No!”
Because he scarcely knew her, her character splintered with awesome complexity before his eyes. Every night she would wipe away with cold cream the elaborate evening face she had composed, and there would appear beneath it her other, softer persona. With her hair loosed behind her
back like a young girl”s, her features appeared thinner, peakier. Even the luster in her eyes seemed to change. It calmed to a tentative stare. Her whole demeanor seemed to be asking: am I all right?