With passing surprise, she perceives that even the frightful heat has become unimportant to her lately. But now that she thinks of the weather she feels the added oppressiveness in the air and a new undercurrent of tension, like electricity — almost like something about to explode. She’s still searching for a reply that won’t displease him when, to her relief, a brain-fever bird in the tamarinds calls out so loudly that she can’t be expected to say anything till it stops.
Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Who-are-you? echoes another bird, in flight seemingly, the question getting louder and louder as it approaches; it flaps and flutters among the green clusters of the banana trees just outside, shouts, Who-are-you? right into the room, then flies off again, still calling out at the top of its voice the question nobody ever answers, which is repeated by all the other brain-fever birds for miles around.
Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Who-are-you? The mounting volume of noise comes from both sides of the house, from the back, from the front, from the compound, the road, the swamp, the trees, from everywhere at once. Hundreds, thousands of birds are all shouting their heads off the girl’s never heard them make such a racket. The frantic cries sound to her not only demented but threatening, so that she feels uneasy. Some of them seem to sound distinctly ominous. Yet she must imagine this, for, in reality, all the cries are exactly alike. All have the same infuriating, monotonous, unstoppable persistence; all sound equally mechanical, motiveless, not expressing anger, or fear, or love, or any — sort of avian feeling — their sole function seems to be to drive people mad.
No human voice can compete with the din. The two under the fan have to sit helplessly, waiting for the row to subside. Suede Boots smiles, and she, disguising the uneasiness she can’t get rid of, smiles back. Her hands have instinctively covered her ears, but she lowers them with the intention of asking if all the birds have gone suddenly crazy. At the same moment, however, she notices that he is no longer smiling.
He has already heard the new sound she is only just catching, which is also mechanical and monotonous and has the same inexorable persistence common to all machine-made noise, that goes on and on, indifferent to everything. It’s not easy to follow the low hum, or rumble, through the delirious pandemonium of the birds’ repetitive questions. Hardly has she recognized it as the sound of an approaching car than it stops
Everything stops with it. Or so it seems. The birds’ (Ties, at any rate, are abruptly cut off, and it’s impossible to tell whether they’ve been interrupted by the car, or whether their explosive outburst has come to its natural conclusion. In the sudden silence, the footsteps which can be heard steadily coming nearer sound unnaturally loud. Beating on the stone floor with the terrifying, inflexible regularity of a machine nobody can stop, they progress towards the door, the flaps of which fly apart to admit Mr Dog Head.
He stands a few paces away, staring at the pair. His cold, very bright blue eyes have a glint that seems not quite normal. His hat has left a red ring round his forehead; it might be the diadem of a prince to judge by his haughty, domineering expression. No one speaks or moves. All three of them seem held in suspense, as if mesmerized. Only the fan continues its lackadaisical circling, the high squeak it emits with each revolution now piercingly loud.
This of course is the moment the girl dreads, when everything will suddenly come to an end. Although her fear isn’t fully conscious she feels she must make some kind of effort to save her happiness. She starts moving the teapot in front of her as if it were some heavy object, but doesn’t manage to complete the gesture, which would be futile in any case. ‘Will you have some tea?’ Her low voice travels a little way into the silence, but seems to make no headway against it, and expires, leaving her mute and motionless as before.
Her husband takes no notice whatever of her. His blue eyes stare icily, fixedly, at the visitor, with disgust and abysmal contempt. His big aristocratic nose arches itself superciliously as he asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ as though he were asking: ‘Why did you ever have to emerge from the primordial slime?’
Suede Boots, who’s got up in confusion, stammers something, steps forward and holds out his hand, hardly knowing what he is doing the man’s lordly, insulting behaviour, combined with the tension it’s impossible to ignore, deprive him completely of his usual aplomb.
For a second, or for several seconds, these two confront one another. They are dressed alike. Both wear shorts, and a short-sleeved bush jacket which, with belt, numerous buttoned pockets and shoulder tabs has a vaguely military aspect. But while in one case this might be the uniform of a general, in the other it’s more like a Boy Scout’s. The wearer’s young, bare, rounded knees look half pathetic, half comic; most unlike the tough, sinewy, hairy knees of his much taller senior, who is in every way far more formidable, in his arrogance and his gaunt, mature, muscular virility, beneath which can be felt a disturbing suggestion of something faintly unbalanced.
Suddenly, without warning, in sudden mad irritability, Dog Head lifts his clenched fist and brings it down with terrific force on the outstretched hand, knocking it away from him. ‘Out!’ he snaps, like a savage dog; the single-syllable command, and the accompanying jerk of the head, both express ultimate scorn.
The young man goes very red in the face, and, inarticulate with pain and rage, bursts into unintelligible indignation, looking more than ever like a furious little boy, almost on the verge of tears. He’s like a sort of juvenile Jack the Giant Killer before his opponent. Except that it’s obviously the giant who will do the killing in this case.
‘Out!’ The command is snapped for the second time, with insufferable superiority. ‘Or are you waiting to be slung out by the scruff of your neck?’
The young fellow’s red face turns quite pale now, but he gamely assumes a fighting attitude, although it’s only too evident to him that he hasn’t a chance — not a hope in hell — against this lunatic, who will ‘wipe the floor with him’, ‘make mincemeat of him’, etc.
But at the last moment, the girl saves the situation for him by crying, ‘Oh, no…!’ and hiding her face in her hands.
Whereupon, much relieved, he sensibly abandons his pugilistic stance, thankful for the chance to retire without being branded a coward. He pretends he is doing it for her sake, as he hurries out of the room, avoiding her with his eyes, and looking extremely uncomfortable as well as shamefaced.
As if materialized by the order, ‘Go and make sure he is off the premises,’ Mohammed Dirwaza Khan receives the command with a bow, and immediately glides out in silent pursuit of the departing guest.
Husband and wife are now left alone. The latter hasn’t moved, and remains in the same position, her face hidden, while the fan’s squeak reaches a maddening climax, rasping the nerves. Owing to the defective mechanism, the high, shrill screech is repeated at slightly irregular intervals, and these marginal variations are unpredictable, and as agonizing as Chinese water torture.
The girl’s silence is unendurable to the man, who now comes forward and stops in front of her, his eyes flaring crazily. As she still doesn’t speak or look up, he seizes her shoulders, and roughly shakes her backwards and forwards to force her to attend to him.
‘Are you listening to me?’ — even now he’s not certain That piddling pup isn’t to come into this house again — ever! Do you understand?’
Even this doesn’t make her open her mouth. And when, after a minute, he lets her go, she at once returns to her former pose, with her face in her hands. The only difference is that his rough handling has further disarranged the untidy hair, which now falls over her hands and wrists in such a way as to leave the back of her neck uncovered. More of the pale shiny mass of hair is exposed to the draught of the fan, loose strands of it thrust themselves out like tentacles in different directions, the many separate hairs on the surface weave in and out of each other continually, producing unexpected tremors and eddies, surrounding her bowed head with a misty effect, as ceaselessly circling insects surround a lamp.