I followed his eyes and realized he was addressing a little shack partly hidden in a clump of trees.
Someone was emerging from the shack and out of the trees. She was barefoot and she bent forward to feed the chickens. I saw the back of her knees and the fine beautiful grain of her flesh. Donne looked at her as at a larger and equally senseless creature whom he governed and ruled like a fowl.
*
I half-woke for the second or third time to the sound of insistent thumping and sobbing in the hall outside my door. I awoke and dressed quickly. Mariella stood in the hall, dishevelled as ever, beating her hand on my door.
“Quiet, quiet,” I said roughly shrinking from her appearance. She shuddered and sobbed. “He beat me,” she burst out at last. She lifted her dress to show me her legs. I stroked the firm beauty of her flesh and touched the ugly marks where she had been whipped. “Look,” she said, and lifted her dress still higher. Her convulsive sobbing stopped when I touched her again.
*
A brilliant day. The sun smote me as I descended the steps. We walked to the curious high swinging gate like a waving symbol and warning taller than a hanging man whose toes almost touched the ground; the gate was as curious and arresting as the prison house we had left above and behind, standing on the tallest stilts in the world.
“Donne cruel and mad,” Mariella cried. She was staring hard at me. I turned away from her black hypnotic eyes as if I had been blinded by the sun, and saw inwardly in the haze of my blind eye a watching muse and phantom whose breath was on my lips.
She remained close to me and the fury of her voice was in the wind. I turned away and leaned heavily against the frail brilliant gallows-gate of the sky, looking down upon the very road where I had seen the wild horse, and the equally wild demon and horseman fall. Mariella had killed him.
*
I awoke in full and in earnest with the sun’s blinding light and muse in my eye. My brother had just entered the room. I felt the enormous relief one experiences after a haze and a dream. “You’re still alive,” I cried involuntarily. “I dreamt Mariella ambushed and shot you.” I started rubbing the vision from my eye. “I’ve been here just a few days,” I spoke guardedly, “and I don’t know all the circumstances” — I raised myself on my elbow — “but you are a devil with that woman. You’re driving her mad.”
Donne’s race clouded and cleared instantly. “Dreamer,” he warned, giving me a light wooden tap on the shoulder, “life here is tough. One has to be a devil to survive. I’m the last landlord. I tell you I fight everything in nature, flood, drought, chicken hawk, rat, beast and woman. I’m everything. Midwife, yes, doctor, yes, gaoler, judge, hangman, every blasted thing to the labouring people. Look man, look outside again. Primitive. Every boundary line is a myth. No-man’s land, understand?”
“There are still labouring people about, you admit that.” I was at a loss for words and I stared blindly through the window at an invisible population.
“It’s an old dream,” I plucked up the courage to express my inner thoughts.
“What is?”
“It started when we were at school, I imagine. Then you went away suddenly. It stopped then. I had a curious sense of hard-won freedom when you had gone. Then to my astonishment, long after, it came again. But this time with a new striking menace that flung you from your horse. You fell and died instantly, and yet you were the one who saw, and I was the one who was blind. Did I ever write and tell you” — I shrank from Donne’s supercilious smile, and hastened to justify myself — “that I am actually going blind in one eye?” I was gratified by his sudden startled expression.
“Blind?” he cried.
“My left eye has an incurable infection,” I dedared. “My right eye — which is actually sound — goes blind in my dream,” I felt foolishly distressed. “Nothing kills your sight,” I added with musing envy. “And your vision becomes,” I hastened to complete my story, “your vision becomes the only remaining window on the world for me.”
I felt a mounting sense of distress.
“Mariella?” There was a curious edge of mockery and interest in Donne’s voice.
“I never saw her before in my dream,” I said. I continued with a forced warmth — “I am glad we are together again after so many years. I may be able to free myself of this — this —” I searched for a word — “this obsession. After all it’s childish.”
Donne flicked ash and tobacco upon the floor. I could see a certain calculation in his dead seeing eye. “I had almost forgotten I had a brother like you,” he smiled matter-of-factly. “It had passed from my mind — this dreaming twin responsibility you remember.” His voice expanded and a sinister under-current ran through his remarks — “We belong to a short-lived family and people. It’s so easy to succumb and die. It’s the usual thing in this country as you well know.” He was smiling and indifferent. “Our parents died early. They had a hard life. Tried to fight their way up out of an economic nightmare: farmers and hand-to-mouth business folk they were. They gave up the ghost before they had well started to live.” He stared at me significantly. “I looked after you, son.” He gave me one of his ruthless taps. “Father and Mother rolled into one for a while. I was a boy then. I had almost forgotten. Now I’m a man. I’ve learnt,” he waved his hands at the savannahs, “to rule this. This is the ultimate. This is everlasting. One doesn’t have to see deeper than that, does one?” He stared at me hard as death. “Rule the land,” he said, “while you still have a ghost of a chance. And you rule the world. Look at the sun.” His dead eye blinded mine. “Look at the sun,” he cried in a stamping terrible voice.
II
The map of the savannahs was a dream. The names Brazil and Guyana were colonial conventions I had known from childhood. I clung to them now as to a curious necessary stone and footing, even in my dream, the ground I knew I must not relinquish. They were an actual stage, a presence, however mythical they seemed to the universal and the spiritual eye. They were as close to me as my ribs, the rivers and the flatland, the mountains and heartland I intimately saw. I could not help cherishing my symbolic map, and my bodily prejudice like a well-known room and house of superstition within which I dwelt. I saw this kingdom of man turned into a colony and battleground of spirit, a priceless tempting jewel I dreamed I possessed.
I pored over the map of the sun my brother had given me. The river of the savannahs wound its way far into the distance until it had forgotten the open land. The dense dreaming jungle and forest emerged. Mariella dwelt above the falls in the forest. I saw the rocks bristling in the legend of the river. On all sides the falling water boiled and hissed and roared. The rocks in the tide flashed their presentiment in the sun, everlasting courage and the other obscure spirits of creation. One’s mind was a chaos of sensation, even pleasure, faced by imminent mortal danger. A white fury and foam churned and raced on the black tide that grew golden every now and then like the crystal memory of sugar. From every quarter a mindless stream came through the ominous rocks whose presence served to pit the mad foaming face. The boat shuddered in an anxious grip and in a living streaming hand that issued from the bowels of earth. We stood on the threshold of a precarious standstill. The outboard engine and propeller still revolved and flashed with mental silent horror now that its roar had been drowned in other wilder unnatural voices whose violent din rose from beneath our feet in the waters. Donne gave a louder cry at last, human and incredible and clear, and the boat-crew sprang to divine attention. They seized every paddle and with immortal effort edged the vessel forward. Our bow pointed to a solid flat stone unbroken and clear, running far into the river’s bank. It looked near and yet was as far from us as the blue sky from the earth. Sharp peaks and broken hillocks grew on its every side, save where we approached, and to lose our course or fail to keep our head signified a crashing stop with a rock boring and gaping open our bottom and side. Every man paddled and sweated and strained toward the stone and heaven in his heart. The bowman sprang upon the hospitable ground at last followed by a nimble pair from the crew. Ropes were extended and we were drawn into a pond and still water between the whirling stream and the river’s stone.