As far as one can ever be sure, spring has come. The air is balmy, the green tips of new grass-shoots are beginning to push out here and there, flurries of desert-quail chase before us. If we had left the oasis now rather than two weeks ago we would have travelled faster and not have risked our lives. On the other hand, would we have been lucky enough to find the barbarians? This very day, I am sure, they are folding their tents, packing their carts, bringing their flocks under the whip for the spring migrations. I was not wrong to take the risk, though I know the men blame me. ("Bringing us out here in winter!" I imagine them saying. "We should never have agreed!" And what must they think now that they realize they were not part of an embassy to the barbarians as I hinted but simply an escort for a woman, a leftover barbarian prisoner, a person of no account, the Magistrate's slut?)
We try to retrace our old route as closely as possible, relying on the star-sightings I have been careful to plot. The wind is behind us, the weather is warmer, the horses' loads are lighter, we know where we are, there is no reason why we should not travel fast. But at the first night's stop there is a setback. I am called to the campfire where one of the young soldiers sits dejectedly with his face in his hands. His boots are off, his footcloths unwrapped.
"Look at his foot, sir," says our guide.
The right foot is puffy and inflamed. "What is wrong?" I ask the boy. He lifts the foot and shows me a heel caked with blood and pus. Even above the smell of dirty footcloths I detect a putrid odour.
"How long has your foot been like this?" I shout. He hides his face. "Why did you not say anything? Didn't I tell you all that you must keep your feet clean, that you must change your footcloths every second day and wash them, that you must put ointment on blisters and bandage them? I gave those orders for a reason! How are you going to travel with your foot in that condition?"
The boy does not reply. "He did not want to hold us up," his friend whispers.
"He did not want to hold us up but now we have to cart him all the way back!" I shout. "Boil water, see that he cleans his foot and bandages it!"
I am right. When next morning they try to help him on with his boot he cannot hide his agony. With the bandaged foot wound in a bag and tied he can limp along over the easier ground; but for the most part he has to ride.
We will all be happy when this journey is over. We are tired of each other's company.
On the fourth day we strike the bed of the dead lagoon and follow it south-east for several miles before we reach our old waterhole with its clump of stark poplar-trunks. There we rest for a day, gathering our strength for the hardest stretch. We fry a supply of fatcakes and boil the last potful of beans to a mash.
I keep to myself. The men talk in low voices and fall into silence when I am near. All the earlier excitement has gone out of the expedition, not only because its climax has been so disappointing-a palaver in the desert followed by the same road back-but because the presence of the girl had spurred the men into sexual display, into a brotherly rivalry which has now declined into morose irritability directed willy-nilly against me for taking them on a foolhardy jaunt, against the horses for their recalcitrance, against their fellow with the sore foot for holding them up, against the brute impedimenta they have to carry, even against themselves. I set an example by laying out my bedroll beside the fire beneath the stars, preferring the cold of the open air to the choking warmth of a tent with three disgruntled men. The next night no one offers to pitch the tent and we all sleep outside.
By the seventh day we are making our way through the salt wastes. We lose another horse. The men, tired of the monotonous beans and flourcakes, ask to slaughter it for food. I give my permission but do not join in. "I will go on ahead with the horses," I say. Let them enjoy their feast. Let me not hinder them from imagining it is my throat they cut, my bowels they tear out, my bones they crack. Perhaps they will be friendlier afterwards.
I think with yearning of the familiar routine of my duties, of the approaching summer, the long dreamy siestas, conversations with friends at dusk under the walnut trees, with boys bringing tea and lemonade and the eligible girls in twos and threes promenading before us on the square in their finery. Only days since I parted from that other one, and I find her face hardening over in my memory, becoming opaque, impermeable, as though secreting a shell over itself. Plodding across the salt I catch myself in a moment of astonishment that I could have loved someone from so remote a kingdom. All I want now is to live out my life in ease in a familiar world, to die in my own bed and be followed to the grave by old friends.
From as far away as ten miles we can make out the jutting watchtowers against the sky; while we are still on the track south of the lake the ochre of the walls begins to separate out from the grey of the desert background. I glance at the men behind me. Their step too has quickened, they can barely hide their excitement. We have not bathed or changed our clothes in three weeks, we stink, our skin is dry and seamed in black from the beating of wind and sun, we are exhausted, but we walk like men, even the boy who stumps along now on his bandaged foot with his chest thrown out. It could have been worse: it could have been better, perhaps, but it could have been worse. Even the horses, their bellies bloated with marsh-grass, seem restored to life.
In the fields the first spring shoots are beginning to show. The thin tones of a trumpet reach our ears; the horsemen of the welcoming party issue from the gates, the sun flashing on their helmets. We look like scarecrows: it would have been better if I had told the men to put on their armour for these last few miles. I watch the horsemen trot towards us, expecting them at any moment to break into a gallop, to fire off their guns in the air and shout. But their demeanour remains businesslike, they are not a welcoming party at all, I begin to realize, there are no children running after them: they divide in two and surround us, there is not one face among them that I recognize, their eyes are stony, they do not answer my questions but march us back like prisoners through the open gates. It is only when we emerge on to the square and see the tents and hear the hubbub that we understand: the army is here, the promised campaign against the barbarians is under way.
4
A MAN SITS AT MY desk in the office behind the courtroom. I have never seen him before but the insignia on his lilac-blue tunic tell me that he belongs to the Third Bureau of the Civil Guard. A pile of brown folders tied with pink tapes lies at his elbow; one is open before him. I recognize the folders: they contain records of taxes and levies dating back fifty years. Can he really be examining them? What is he looking for? I speak: "Is there anything I can help you with?"