Who Are You? (2 page)

Throughout the meal he's said not a word to the man. Since he still doesn't speak and only smiles at him in passing, it's hard to say why he now seems to show more than the normal goodwill towards him almost familiarity — or how his smile exceeds the permissible, or fails to comply with conventional standards of conduct, or appears indiscreet.

The recipient of the smile notes the slight excess if that's what it is - with gratification. It accentuates the
perfection of
his
behaviour in acknowledging it only by bowing his head, without overstepping formal correctness or discretion in the slightest degree. In fact, an on-looker would see no difference between this salutation and the bow he invariably makes when his master passes on his way out of a room.

All the same, he is satisfied that his leisure has not been sacrificed in vain. And in future he will be more of a tyrant to the rest of the staff, because of the strengthened solidarity he feels with the man who has just left him.

5

The upper floor of the house is divided into three : a middle room into which the stairs lead, and a bedroom on each side. The bedrooms too are without doors, each door frame provided with two wooden panels which spring back into place after being pushed apart, a foot or two of vacancy above and below.

The central porch with its flat roof is reached by long windows from the middle room, which contains some cheap cane furniture and a larger piece that seems to have overflowed from one of the bedrooms. This is a wardrobe, made in the local jail, out of some dark reddish wood which always feels slightly sticky to the touch. Bottles, glasses and siphon stand on a table. In the middle of the ceiling a big fan circulates sluggishly, stirring up the hot air.

The wire screens are now closed over the windows and seem to exclude any coolness there might be outside. Yet the girl sits as close as possible to one of the windows, straining her eyes to read by the inadequate light from a bulb dangling far above; she can't bear to switch on the table lamp, which gives out more heat than light.

Mr Dog Head, a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and a wire fly-swatter in the other, prowls round the walls, methodically exterminating mosquitoes. There are so many of them that their high whine is audible above the whirring of the fan and the sound of his movements.

He realizes that he'll never be able to kill them all and suddenly becomes exasperated, though not so much by the mosquitoes as by the girl's silence and immobility, and by the way she's taking no notice of him. It always irritates him to see her sitting about reading; that she should go on even when he's in the room seems a deliberate insult. His lordliness affronted by her lack of attention, he makes a wild swipe, simultaneously muttering something like, ‘It's really too much . . .’ which he alters to an accusing: ‘Is it too much to ask you to keep the screens shut ?’ gazing accusingly at her.

To his wife, there seems no point in answering. She feels that it's utterly futile to try to talk to him. She might as well talk to the wall, for all the possibility of communication between them. She keeps her eyes fixed on her book as though too absorbed in her reading to hear him.

Into her continued silence, he ejects: ‘
Anopheles!
How many times have I told you they're deadly to me ?’ Identifying a mosquito by its trick of standing on its head, legs crossed over its back, as it hovers with wings extended, he crushes it with the paper, adding one more to the innumerable brownish blood smears on the wall.

‘That devil's had somebody's blood already!’ He again looks at her accusingly, as if she were to blame. As she's still silent, apparently absorbed in the book, he becomes determined to make her attend to him, demanding indignantly: ‘Do you
want
me to go down with malaria?’

‘No, of course not.’ She sees that she can't put off talking to him any longer, and reluctantly raises her head, confronting his angry face; it looks to her hard, blank and impenetrable as a wall, with two blue glass circles for eyes above the hard, almost brutal mouth.

What possible contact can she have with the owner of such a face ? It half frightens her. (After all, she's only just eighteen, and he's double her age.) Feeling bewildered and helpless, she wonders why she's been pushed into marrying him.

'Have you taken your quinine ?' is all she can find to say. She deliberately makes her face blank to hide her apprehension, with the result that she looks almost childish, her badly-cut hair hanging down by her cheeks. Her eyes are slightly inflamed by the glaring sun, and from trying to read in a bad light, and she keeps rubbing them like a little girl who's been crying.

Her words irritate him almost as much as her pale face, with its faintly bloodshot eyes, the vague, blank expression of which makes him angry because it seems so insulting, as though she were miles away. He too wonders why they are married; why did he ever allow her mother to persuade him into it ? He feels he's been tricked which isn't far from the truth. But none of this is clear in his head; he is only aware of the inflaming of his permanent grievance against life in general, and her in particular. He blames her for everything. She gets on his nerves so much that he moves his hand as if he meant to hit her, deflecting his aim at the last moment and squashing another mosquito instead.

A clock downstairs strikes ten. He counts the strokes, and is suddenly overcome by the emptiness of the evening. It's still quite early, and there's nothing on earth to do. More aggrieved than ever he stares round the room, and seems to be listening. Not a sound comes from below. The servants have finished their work and retired for the night to their separate quarters. If he wants one of them now he will have to shout and go
on shouting for some considerable time. He is left with the noise the frogs are making outside, the mosquitoes, and the exasperating girl. What's the good of a wife who's no sort of companion ? It doesn't occur to him that he's in any way responsible for their marriage. He blames her totally for not appreciating the privilege of being married to him.

Meanwhile how is he going to pass the time ? Of course, he can get into his car and drive round to the club. But that's only another form of empty boredom. As he doesn't play bridge and dislikes the other men, knowing he's unpopular with them, all he can do there is drink. He might as well do that at home.

Swinging round to the bottles he pours himself a stiff whisky, swallows it, and immediately pours out another, not bothering about his wife, who never drinks. He remains standing, keeping his back to her, saying nothing. He goes on drinking steadily, trying to drink away his boredom, only occasionally interrupting the process to swat another mosquito.

The girl watches with more open apprehension. But she seems more alive; she has thought of something, and is only waiting for the right moment to put her plan into operation. When he notices something of interest on the bloodstained page in his hand and smoothes it out, bending over to read, she stealthily gets up and tiptoes towards her room behind him, keeping her eyes on his back.

The husband knows all the time what she's doing, and just as she gets to the door suddenly jumps on her, shouting, 'Oh, no, you don't !' seizing her wrist so violently that she utters an exclamation of pain, or fright, or disappointment, or all three, but doesn't speak a word.
His blue eyes blaze furiously at her. For some reason he takes her silence now as a sign of conceit, just as he does her continual reading it's because he hardly ever reads anything but a paper himself that this seems like flaunting conceit and superiority. How dare she pretend she's superior to him, just because she's passed some damn fool exam women shouldn't be allowed to go in for? But what can he do about it? Inwardly raging in his frustration he stands gripping her wrist, until a gratifying idea comes into his head — he'll show her . . . ! He'll take the conceit off her face . . .

His expression suddenly gloating, he orders, 'Don't move !' and hurries off, coming back the next moment with a couple of tennis racquets and thrusting one into her hand.

She accepts it unwillingly, opening her mouth as if to protest, but in the end says nothing. Several seconds later she is still standing in the same position, as if paralysed, the racquet dangling from her hand. He gets on with his drinking, but is careful to make no noise now, all the while listening and watching as well. It's obvious that both of them are waiting for something to happen, which she dreads, and he's looking forward to eagerly. Presently the whisky he's drunk seems to improve his mood, for he speaks to her more amiably, as if in encouragement, his voice only slightly above a whisper. 'Come on, now ! Be a sport — it's all good clean fun . . .' However, the low tone sounds furtive, with an underlying viciousness far from friendly. The girl is not taken in, but seems unable either to speak or move, just standing there, her eyes dilated and horrified.

All at once she gasps loudly. He silences her by a violent gesture. With disagreeable suddenness, as if
from nowhere, a small animal has appeared in the room, its head and sensitive twitching nose turned towards them, its body foreshortened. Moving with the same disconcerting and rather unpleasant suddenness, it darts out of sight, reappearing halfway up the wall, where it is seen to have a long tapering leathery tail, like a whiplash, before it vanishes somewhere on the periphery of the ceiling; in the centre of which the fan continues to rotate as if nothing had happened, churning up the oppressive air.

The girl's eyes, which have been following the beast's movements, now return to her husband. She doesn't speak, has not moved, but, since she gasped, her lips have not closed completely and are now trembling, her breathing is faster than usual. She controls herself up to a point, but can't hide her aversion to this whole procedure, standing petrified, staring at him with wide eyes. He doesn't speak or move either, but watches the ceiling intently; both are virtually frozen. The room fills with suspense, with the noise of insects, and the drone of the fan.

Suddenly a confused scuffling above is followed by a squeal, cut off in the middle; a small animal — not the same animal as before - falls to the floor with a plop.
Stunned, the rat lies still for a second, then picks itself up and rushes away. The man watches, estimating the distance with narrowed eyes, before swinging the racquet down and hitting the beast fair and square, sending it flying in her direction. 'Go on lob it back to me ! You can't miss such an easy one !'

Her fingers clench spasmodically on the handle of the racquet she's holding, but instead of obeying she lets it fall on the floor with a clatter, and drops her face in her hands.

'Oh, so you won't play . . .' His voice now has an ugly sound. But he's more interested in the rat, skidding sideways across the boards as fast as its injured legs can move he brings the racquet swooping down on it very much faster.

Standing there triumphant, he pulls out his handkerchief and rubs the strings, while at the same time his foot heavily and repeatedly stamps on the thing on the floor, finally kicking it out of sight under the wardrobe. To horrify the girl even more he says spitefully, without looking round, Perhaps the rat king will come next,' referring to a legendary monstrosity consisting of six or eight rats (a whole litter presumably), joined together by a single tail. There is no reply. He goes on cleaning his racquet. And when he presently turns his head she is no longer there.

6

Mr Dog Head, quite nude, is inspecting himself in the mirror in his room, but as it is only big enough to show him down to the waist he is dissatisfied and keeps turning and twisting in an attempt to see more. The tough male muscularity of his body is now very apparent. And it is quite true that most of it is covered by the close brown-red pelt, resembling the neat covering of his skull, and that this greatly increases his doglike aspect, which the local people must have divined by instinct, since he's certainly never allowed them to see him naked.

This room is even barer than the one next to it. There is a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, the fan, the bed shrouded in dingy netting, a table beside it with a shelf underneath. On the top of the table is a whisky bottle, a siphon and a glass; on the shelf below lies the only book he ever reads, which can't be seen very well because it is in the shadow cast by the tabletop black, it might be a bible, and is certainly a religious book of some kind with a gilt cross on the cover.

As he gazes at his reflection his big aristocratic nose seems to arch itself in arrogant complacency, as though he were lord of the earth. He does belong to a titled family, and if several people die first he will eventually become an earl. But this doesn't seem to justify his assumption that he's superior to everyone else alive and that everyone must give way to him.

Physically, he is quite impressive, in an overbearing fashion, flexing his powerful muscles that bulge and slide under the skin like bunches of snakes as he stretches his arms and bends several times to touch his toes. Even now, in the middle of the night, with the temperature at its lowest, this effort leaves his neck, arms and face thickly beaded with sweat; which, however, is quickly absorbed by the furry covering, quickly disappearing.

His big-nosed face glides over the mirror in profile as he stoops down, scrutinizing his legs, assuring himself that their muscular development is as satisfactory as that of his arms. He swings his weight from one foot to the other and pinches his calves, which are hard as iron. But, still not quite satisfied, he wants to see the whole of himself, and because he can't is suddenly overcome by his usual grievance against the world, his haughty countenance taking on a petulant look it must often have worn when he was a spoilt little boy. Impulsively he slops whisky into the glass, not bothering to watch how much he pours out, and gulps it down without adding any water. As if the spirit took effect instantly, he at once goes into the deserted middle room, which is faintly lit by the light in the room he has just left.