— I know. I meant, go, emigrate.
— Wherever to? Eat up your gruel and hurry, we’re late. You know this is the best, the richest, the freest part of the world.
— That’s just it.
Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl, which looks like the inside of the moon.
— Nobody has ever photographed the inside of the moon.
— Or the inside of the earth for that matter. Why should they?
— Oh but they have. The very bathysphere of our being.
— Do you mean you want me to leave the big house, and Mrs. Mgulu, and everything, to follow you into the bathysphere of your being?
— Perhaps.
— Where were you thinking of going?
— Into Patagonia.
— Oh I see. Yes. I understand. You feel your job up at the house isn’t real, then?
— Oh I’m grateful, don’t think I’m not grateful.
— Don’t you love Mrs. Mgulu any more?
— I love her. But she doesn’t possess me.
— She wouldn’t claim to. The slave age is over.
— Officially.
— It’s always up to you. I’m glad. It’s good to be free. But you’re in no state to sacrifice yourself for others. They want strong healthy persons who can stand up to a life of unimaginably hard work that never ends, in terrible conditions. You wouldn’t last two minutes.
— I’d find the strength.
— You’re not serious, are you?
Sometimes it is sufficient to imagine a way of life for the way of life to occur. Or not, as the case might be, the silence seeming to support the negative. The static eye fixes the empty bowl of gruel, the mobile eye expresses an emotion nearer to concern, perhaps, than to admiration.
— I don’t think you realise how sick you are.
— Yes, I am pale, but look at my eyelids, they are the right colour, for the time of year, I mean.
— Perhaps I ought to tell you — well, we’ll talk about it some other time. We’re terribly late, I’ll have to wash up tonight, come on, we must go.
The fig-tree’s grey framework of trunk and branch, which leans along the edge of the bank at an angle of forty degrees, is further framed by a mass of deep green foliage. Inside the angle the road is briefly seen. The road is not too hot underfoot as yet. I do wish Mrs. Ned would do something about her shack, it does look so dilapidated, doesn’t it. Especially the verandah. She ought to get a new wash-tub too, I keep mending it for her. You too? Oh, I didn’t know. The wood’s rotten, the nails can’t get a grip. But then our roof does need a gutter along the front, it slopes straight down to a curtain of rain on the verandah, Mrs. Tom made the remark to me, I felt so ashamed. You will? Oh, that’s wonderful. Before the rainy season. How hot it is already. The conversation proceeds and immediately underfoot the road moves slowly along, warming the soles of the foot through the thin canvas shoe as it steps down upon it, ahead of the body and ahead of the other foot, until the other foot follows, carrying the body with it, and steps down on the warm road ahead of the body and ahead of the other foot. That is the way a man advances, his hands free to hold another’s hands, his eyes unblinkered by the other eyes that share the observation of phenomena, along the road with the town behind, through the olive groves and the carefully terraced, carefully irrigated vegetable gardens which nevertheless look so dry, through the village of smart concrete huts, past the concrete post-office and the grocer’s square shop, between the friendly wave and the dust from the beaten carpet, along the road, past the big white houses with tall wrought-iron gates and shaded drives, up the hill along more olive groves.
— Can I give you a lift? I take it you’re going to Western Approaches.
The vehicle has drawn up silently alongside. The pale blue face at the wheel remains impassive. The rear glass is down, framing no cavern-blue but the normal healthy tone of irrigated earth, deep velvet round a radiant smile, under the sea-green alexandrite and the pink straw hat.
— Hop in. Lilly, you come in the back with me. I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up before, it would have saved you the long walk. But I started off later than I intended this morning. I’ve been up-country at the farm you know, and I promised myself an early start before it got too hot. Well, I’ve almost made it. Olaf switch the fan on will you, please?
The road is flint, the olive groves are misty-blue, the pale blue wall is gently rounded. It is impossible at any one moment to see whether things are any different round the corner but the moments vanish fast. Above the pale blue walls the poinsettia bunches purple, the bougainvillaea hangs intensely violet, the pines are blue-black and the palms aquamarine. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates the feathery branches droop like sea-ferns over the pale blue wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates and beyond the mimosas on either side the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. The tall wrought-iron gates open by remote control forming a guard of lances on each side of the vehicle as it glides in between them. The sun flickers through the quick plane-trees, increasing the neural electricity for the oscillograph, a huge triangle appears, orange, and a yellow shower, circles of red, oh, close your eyes, relax, under the eyelids the dark curves of chin and lips and nose seen from below the breasts ensilked in orange fill up the eyespace shimmering with yellow and black and pink, swiftly moving, but under the eyelids the triangle remains, trembling in orange, and here we are, home at last, well I must say I feel quite tired, I’m not used to getting up so early. I have an enormous schedule too, so Lilly you must come up and help me change, Camille is off I think today. Goodbye. Oh not at all, don’t mention it. I’m glad I saw you.
It is impossible ever to see the beginning of anything because at the beginning the thing is not recognisable as anything distinct and by the time it has become something distinct the beginning is lost.
To the right of the drive through the trees the gazebo is just visible on the lawn. The new pavilion has been removed in the walking interval between the making of the facia-board and the burning of the weeds. The new pavilion looks old. The cedar boards have greyed and the windows look blocked in with canvas. The door squeaks on its hinges, releasing the scent of hay and dung and milk that had anonymously roused archaic layers of memory on approach, but only now remembered. The right side of the pavilion is divided into large stalls at ground and upper levels, each filled with hay stacked up, and some with straw. The left side is a stable, each stall white tiles and stainless steel, filled with its cow ruminating in clean fresh straw. Straight ahead, at the upper level, there is no facia-board but only another stack of hay. Straight ahead, at the upper level, in the corner to the left where the hay has been dipped into, the morning light pours from the Southern window to illuminate one solitary kidney shape of perspex, in brilliant summer blue.
The voices grow into the consciousness. At the far end of the pavilion two men emerge out of a stall and walk together down the wide aisle between the cows and the stacks of hay. They are both very dark against the gleam of Southern light, then dark as well in the full daylight from the windows above the stable stalls, and one is shorter than the other, well-dressed and not belonging quite. He nods as he walks past and on out of the door.
Beyond the trees the earth has been ploughed up into neat but pale and stony furrows, darkening in a wide circle under the already swirling spray, round and round as it unfurls its minute particles at enormous distances. The field stretches as far as the clumps of laurels and azaleas, the hibiscus, fuchsias, palm fronds, pomegranates and green bays that make the white wall merely guessable behind them. To the left of the drive the lawn has also become a pale ploughed field under a swirling universe. Further down beyond the swirling universe the brown goes grey, or is it pale mauve, it becomes grown basil, or is it lavender spike. Along the white wall of the kitchen gardens, to the right of the olive grove, stands the settlement of beehives in a row. There must be a path somewhere leading from here to the head gardener’s cottage beyond the wall and the patch of waste ground where the weeds are burnt. The bees should not be disturbed. Neither the newly planted seed nor the lavender should be trampled. The only way is to go back to the front of the house, turn right then down towards the olive grove. The boy always comes through the olive grove with his wheelbarrow.