"Look under your feet," says the foreman.
It is too dark to see, but when I chop lightly with the mattock I strike something hard; my fingers tell me it is bone.
"They aren't buried properly," he says. He squats at the lip of the pit. "They are lying just any old how, on top of each other."
"Yes," I say. "We can't dig here, can we?"
"No," he says.
"We must fill it in and start again nearer the wall."
He is silent. He reaches out a hand and helps me clamber out. The bystanders say nothing either. I have to toss the bones back in and shovel the first earth before they will pick up their spades.
In the dream I stand again in the pit. The earth is damp, dark water seeps up, my feet squelch, it costs me a slow effort to lift them.
I feel under the surface, searching for the bones. My hand comes up with the corner of a jute sack, black, rotten, which crumbles away between my fingers. I dip back into the ooze. A fork, bent and tarnished. A dead bird, a parrot: I hold it by the tail, its bedraggled feathers hang down, its soggy wings droop, its eye sockets are empty. When I release it, it falls through the surface without a splash. "Poisoned water," I think. "I must be careful not to drink here. I must not touch my right hand to my mouth."
I have not slept with a woman since I returned from the desert. Now at this most inappropriate of times my sex begins to reassert itself.
I sleep badly and wake up in the mornings with a sullen erection growing like a branch out of my groin. It has nothing to do with desire. Lying in my rumpled bed I wait in vain for it to go away. I try to invoke images of the girl who night after night slept here with me. I see her standing barelegged in her shift, one foot in the basin, waiting for me to wash her, her hand pressing down on my shoulder. I lather the stocky calf. She slips the shift up over her head. I lather her thighs; then I put the soap aside, embrace her hips, rub my face in her belly. I can smell the soap, feel the warmth of the water, the pressure of her hands. From the depths of that memory I reach out to touch myself. There is no leap of response. It is like touching my own wrist: part of myself, but hard, dull, a limb with no life of its own. I try to bring it off: futile, for there is no feeling. "I am tired," I tell myself.
For an hour I sit in an armchair waiting for this rod of blood to dwindle. In its own good time it does. Then I dress and go out.
In the night it comes back: an arrow growing out of me, pointing nowhere. Again I try to feed it on images, but detect no answering life.
"Try bread mould and milkroot," the herbalist says. "It may work. If it does not, come back to me. Here is some milkroot. You grind it and mix it to a paste with the mould and a little warm water. Take two spoonfuls after each meal. It is very unpleasant, very bitter, but be assured it will not do you any harm."
I pay him in silver. No one but children will take copper coins any more.
"But tell me," he says: "why should a fine healthy man like yourself want to kill off his desires?"
"It has nothing to do with desire, father. It is simply an irritation. A stiffening. Like rheumatism."
He smiles. I smile back.
"This must be the only shop in town they did not loot," I say. It is not a shop, just a recess and a front under an awning, with racks of dusty jars and, hanging from hooks on the wall, roots and bunches of dried leaves, the medicines with which he has dosed the town for fifty years.
"Yes, they did not trouble me. They suggested that I leave for my own good. 'The barbarians will fry your balls and eat them'-that was what they said, those were their words. I said, 'I was born here, I'll die here, I'm not leaving.' Now they are gone, and it's better without them, I say."
"Yes."
"Try the milkroot. If it doesn't work, come back."
I drink the bitter concoction and eat as much lettuce as I can, since people say that lettuce takes away one's potency. But I do all this halfheartedly, aware that I am misinterpreting the signs.
I also call on Mai. The inn had closed down, there being too little custom; now she comes in to help her mother in the barracks. I find her in the kitchen putting her baby to sleep in its cot near the stove. "I love the big old stove you have here," she says. "It keeps its warmth for hours. Such a gentle warmth." She brews tea; we sit at the table watching the glowing coals through the grate. "I wish I had something nice to offer you," she says, "but the soldiers cleaned out the storeroom, there is hardly anything left."
"I want you to come upstairs with me," I say. "Can you leave the child here?"
We are old friends. Years ago, before she married the second time, she used to visit me in my apartment in the afternoons.
"I'd rather not leave him," she says, "in case he wakes up alone." So I wait while she wraps the child, and then follow her up the stairs: a young woman still, with a heavy body and shapeless spreading thighs. I try to recall what it was like with her, but cannot. In those days all women pleased me.
She settles the child on cushions in a corner, murmuring to it till it falls asleep again.
"It is just for a night or two," I say. "Everything is coming to an end. We must live as we can." She drops her drawers, trampling on them like a horse, and comes to me in her smock. I blow out the lamp. My words have left me dispirited.
As I enter her she sighs. I rub my cheek against hers. My hand finds her breast; her own hand closes over it, caresses it, pushes it aside. "I am a bit sore," she whispers. "From the baby."
I am still searching for something I want to say when I feel the climax come, far-off, slight, like an earth-tremor in another part of the world.
"This is your fourth child, isn't it?" We lie side by side under the covers.
"Yes, the fourth. One died."
"And the father? Does he help?"
"He left some money behind. He was with the army."
"I am sure he will come back."
I feel her placid weight against my side. "I have grown very fond of your eldest boy," I say. "He used to bring me my meals while I was locked up." We lie for a while in silence. Then my head begins to spin. I re-emerge from sleep in time to hear the tail-end of a rattle from my throat, an old man's snore.
She sits up. "I will have to go," she says. "I can't sleep in such bare rooms, I hear creaking all night." I watch her dim shape move as she dresses and picks up the child. "Can I light the lamp?" she says. "I'm afraid of falling on the stairs. Go to sleep. I will bring you breakfast in the morning, if you don't mind millet porridge."
"I liked her very much," she says. "We all did. She never complained, she always did what she was asked, though I know her feet gave her pain. She was friendly. There was always something to laugh about when she was around."
Again I am as dull as wood. She labours with me: her big hands stroke my back, grip my buttocks. The climax comes: like a spark struck far away over the sea and lost at once.
The baby begins to whimper. She eases herself away from me and gets up. Big and naked, she walks back and forth across the patch of moonlight with the baby over her shoulder, patting it, crooning. "He will be asleep in a minute," she whispers. I am half asleep myself when I feel her cool body settle down again beside me, her lips nuzzle my arm.
"I don't want to think about the barbarians," she says. "Life is too short to spend worrying about the future."
I have nothing to say.
"I don't make you happy," she says. "I know you don't enjoy it with me. You are always somewhere else."