The sky gradually darkened, and the wind carried a touch of coolness. Vincent heard the sound of voices. It was two girls walking along the path. One was local, and the other was a brown-skinned Southeast Asian, with a delicate frame and very long arms. And behind the Southeast Asian girl, a woman dressed in black followed closely. Vincent was struck to the heart. But it appeared that the two girls hadn’t detected the woman behind them. They were bent over at the waist, searching for something on the ground.
Vincent stood and greeted them. The girls replied with ambiguous sounds, too absorbed in their own activity to notice him much. Just as they were exchanging this question and answer, the black-clad woman disappeared like a shadow. Vincent stretched his arms out toward the place where she’d been standing, but there was nothing for his arms to enclose.
When Vincent entered Reagan’s house, Reagan had already come downstairs, alert and refreshed. They greeted each other in the living room. As the two men embraced Vincent noticed his old friend’s vigor. As a matter of fact, Vincent had met this old friend only twice before, ten years ago on a bench in a park. He didn’t know how it happened that the two strangers greeted each other without any reason to do so. They had discussed the deep blackish-green lake in front of them. The second day they both went back to the park, continuing their conversation. And after that they hadn’t met again. Vincent knew about it when Reagan signed a contract with his company and later became a regular client. Nonetheless, he had never since tried to meet him face to face, or even mentioned to Joe that he knew Reagan. Over the many years, this old friend became a shadow in his memory. At least until the black-clad woman from his dream offered him a scent of Reagan’s farm, and the past events suddenly revived.
At Reagan’s home Vincent ate a meal and showered, then sat on the roomy sofa and chatted for a while. Reagan spoke of a poisonous species of striped snake, even taking out a picture to show him and warning him to take extra care when walking outside. Vincent didn’t notice the snake in the thick growth of grass — he saw only the image of the black-clad woman next to the snake. At the sight of her back his heart throbbed with terror and he almost let the photograph drop to the floor.
“She’s someone you know. I’ve heard her speak of you.” Reagan glanced at him attentively.
Vincent withdrew his gaze in discomfort and stared instead at the gray-papered walls, at a loss.
On the roomy bed in the guest room Vincent rolled back and forth, unable to sleep. Although the room had an air conditioner and remained cool, his heart churned alongside the waves of heat in the dark beyond the room. It was a long night of surging desire, somewhat like that amorous encounter in the shabby hotel. But there was no one else there.
Reagan had said, “She’s already gone.” What did that mean? That she’d died, or that she’d gone away? His tone of voice hadn’t been sorrowful. Perhaps gone with respect to her was a commonplace. Perhaps she was always coming and going from these tropical regions, and only occasionally stopped over in the city where he lived? He’d tried to guess her nationality. At times he thought she was Arab, at times he thought she was Indian, but there was no way to settle this. Yet at this present moment he realized that for her nationality was entirely meaningless. Before he’d gone to sleep, the woman who’d made the bed for him, Ali, told him that his wife, Lisa, had already come to the farm during the day. Now he fancied that Lisa’s body was everywhere, but there was still no way to expend his desire. Was it more like Lisa or that woman to come and go like a ghost?
After the old clock struck one, Vincent noticed the bedroom wall receding. He remembered that he was on the ground floor. It was possible that he was already sleeping among the rubber trees. He made up his mind: if the striped snakes crawled into the bed, he would play a sex game with them. That would thoroughly change his disposition. He opened his legs to welcome those lascivious small objects; he almost let out a groan.
“Does our guest need anything?” Ali’s aged voice rang out from beyond the door.
Vincent heard her turn on the light in the hallway. She must have stayed outside his door. He wondered what whim had sent him rushing off to spend the night in this place. Was it merely because of the woman in his dream? He wasn’t the sort of man to have affairs. The Arab woman had broken into his life by chance. Originally he’d thought he would be bound to forget about it afterward, but he was unable to.
He got out of bed, opened the door, and saw Ali sitting on a chair in the corridor.
“You’re not sleeping, Mother?”
“Me? I keep watch at night, to stop all of you from running all over the place. Who understands things here? Maybe not even Mr. Reagan.”
“What have you seen?”
“On a scorching night like this, any strange thing can happen. Your wife is a passionate woman.”
“Did she leave right away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she went into the rubber tree groves. She’s not afraid of the heat.”
“I feel a little cold, in fact.”
In fact he was shivering.
“What should I do, Mother?”
“You came here, didn’t you? Just don’t be afraid, and everything will be all right. Try to be like Lisa.”
Vincent wanted to speak to Ali but she stood up, tottering, and said her employer was calling her from upstairs. Oddly enough, it was quiet on all sides and there was nothing to hear, yet she heard her employer’s summons. It would seem that Ali had the hearing of an animal.
He returned to his room and lay down again. He was still in an overstimulated state from waiting for those snakes to come out. He didn’t know when exactly it was, as he lay half-awake, half-asleep, that he heard someone arguing outside the window. Among the voices was Reagan’s. He sounded irritated and dispirited. Vincent heard him say repeatedly, in a voice that was almost crying, “It will kill someone.” Without knowing how, Vincent realized that Reagan was talking to a woman.