The dining-room was decidedly chilly. It had the peculiar stuffy chill of a room which has been kept shut up for a long time. And there was a pervasive, indescribable smell which seemed to emanate from the heavy furniture, a stale, sweetish and yet acrid smell, very indefinite, but marked, with a slight vinegarish flavour, something like the smell of the inside of an old wine barrel. The furniture was of dark wood, quite well-made, but heavy and clumsy-looking.
‘I hope you are fond of curry,’ Jonsen said. He twinkled at Anna across the table which was covered with a coarse cloth, clean, but with the look of having been rough-dried, without ironing. The plates and cutlery were old and of the cheapest description. Nothing matched.
The room was gloomy and close. Anna felt more and more depressed. But she took up her thick, yellowish fork, and ate the rice and the extraordinary brown mess of meat, burning hot and swimming in an oily sea of unknown ingredients, that was set before her. She was depressed: but the curry was good although it burned her mouth sharply. She got it down and began to feel better. Only there was the stale, unpleasant smell in the room, rather sickly. Matthew sat at the end of the table, and ate in quick, large mouthfuls.
The servant came in with an elaborate sweet-dish, a sort of shape, ornamented with pink and white sugar. This was for Anna. The cook had made it specially as a compliment to her, because women were supposed to like sweet things. Neither of the men would touch it. But Anna took some out of consideration for the cook’s feelings, and ate as much as she could.
The servants slithered in and out with plates. They brought fruit, short, stumpy, reddish bananas, little hard oranges, and nuts, and put them on the table.
So the meal came to an end. They went back to the drawing-room. Anna longed for a cup of coffee. But there wasn’t any. The men had another whisky and soda apiece. Anna drank a little out of Matthew’s glass, although she disliked whisky. She felt she needed the warmth. It was not that the night was really cold: but there was a damp, marsh chill which seemed to lower one’s vitality.
Jonsen got out his papers. He was determined to stick to business. He sat down with his notebooks and pencil — though Matthew was not very keen. He turned his back upon Anna. And then he began the dreary technical talk again.
‘Let’s leave it till to-morrow,’ said Matthew. But Jonsen talked on, keeping him occupied. He was determined that Anna should be left out.
There was a noise of frogs croaking in the marsh, a thin twanging of insects. This was the usual evening accompaniment. Jonsen monotonously reeled off figures and facts. There was something ogreish about him, simple, childlike as he was.
Anna went up to bed. No one seemed to take any interest in her, or to care whether she stayed or went away.
There was a lamp in her room. She turned it up and looked round. Nothing had been unpacked, nothing had been arranged. The room was just as she had left it, hours before. She went to the window. The stars flashed at her. There was a faint sheen of light, like a pale glaze, on the flat ground, ghostly and evanescent. She went out on to the veranda. The frogs made a great noise, an orchestration of hoarse, gruff sounds, almost like dogs barking. It was a marsh-kingdom: the spectral glimmer over the ground, the pallid mist in the distance; the watery smell, and all round the house, rough, raucous voices of frogs coughing and barking. Unearthly, it was — and dismal.
She got undressed. She was tired out, and stupified with astonishment and depression. She went to wash in the bathroom. The water which she poured out was still in the basin. She felt almost unconscious. Numbly she dragged down the mosquito-net and crawled into the hard, chilly bed. But there were no springs, it was rigid and unyielding as a plank-bed. And the sheets were coarse cotton. The touch of the cotton irritated her skin as though insects were creeping over her. She was restless, but half-stunned with weariness. The net was like a misty wall round her. She was in a trance of dejection and bewilderment. Through the doorless house she could hear vaguely the voices of the two men, talking, talking.
Presently they came upstairs. Anna started up from a half-sleep. Matthew was undressing in the room next to hers, the middle room. The light of his lamp came under and above the flaps of the doorway. She sat up and looked about her. She hardly knew if she were dead or alive. And she was terrified. And she was lonely. A nightmare terror took hold of her. Matthew put out his light. The ghastly, miasmal darkness covered everything. She felt she would die of the horror of the night, of the dark swamp all round the silent house. She was transfixed with horror. She felt utterly alone, helpless, lost in the horrific strangeness of the alien dark. The loneliness strangled her, she could not endure it.
Despair was like a dead hand on her heart. Where could she go, whom could she call? She was alone, alone, for ever. Then suddenly she felt her mind go blank, she was relaxed. She felt her exhaustion extinguishing fear, blotting out everything, extinguishing her. A sleep that was stronger than desperation drowned her completely, in a deadening flood.
CHAPTER 14
WITHOUT doubt, Naunggyi was rather a nightmare to Anna. And like a nightmare it had its leit motif of horror — the marsh. It was the perpetual influence of the marsh itself which seemed to threaten her with unknown terrors.
By day it was not so obvious. It was veiled by the bright sunshine: hidden behind the strangeness, the unearthly beauty of the place. For it was beautiful. The marsh itself had beauty. The great, strange lake of swampy ground, mysterious with velvety patches of black ooze; the sinister, sudden gleams of iridescence, like glasses mirroring some magic sky; the succulent, emerald leaves, dangerous and poison-green; the piercing blueness of the small flowers. It had some half-evil glamour. But at night, when the darkness took it, it was a demon world.
At first she fought against it. She struggled with the influence of the place, to conquer it. But she was overcome. She felt as though she were being poisoned. Time passed imperceptibly.
There are certain shocks which, if sufficiently strong, seem to have power to destroy the balance of life. Such a shock would seem to overthrow all the intricate, vital, slowly developed mechanism of the mind, to plunge the victim into a chaotic half-world of confusion and loss. This was what had happened to Anna.
After Haddenham, after Blue Hills, Naunggyi came as the most violent shock to her. She was shocked, utterly, through and through, to the very roots of her being. And she was snatched away from everything that was familiar to her. The shock was too much for her. Really and truly, the shock was too violent. She was overcome.
Without realizing it, she was in a state bordering upon collapse. She was like a person who has been in a serious accident, and who walks away, apparently unharmed, but suffering a secret, intolerable strain which will later break out in some distorted sickness of the soul. She went about vague, silent, closed within herself. She was utterly bound up in herself; but in a bad way, a destructive way, as a plant becomes pot-bound. She could not get away from herself. She could scarcely bring herself to speak. It was as if she noticed nothing that went on. She wondered vaguely what was the matter. Her reflected face seemed blank and rather unnatural when she looked at it. But she felt nothing particular.
She was very isolated. The village of Naunggyi was a good mile away, across the yellow, turbulent river. Matthew’s bungalow was one of a collection of some half-dozen houses which formed the English colony, the seat of government. There was the newish, pretentious-looking club where every evening the English people assembled: the social centre. Round about were the other houses, not very near together. Each house stood in the midst of its own compound, a large rectangle of land, more or less wild, with the great forest trees still standing. Matthew’s house was the one nearest to the marsh. In the bazaar at Naunggyi one could buy food, and cheap household necessities, and the beautiful stiff silk from Mandalay, shot with every colour, like a handful of bright flowers. But there were no shops, no amenities of civilization at all.