Naturally, this enrages him even more. ‘What were you doing alone with that young whippersnapper?’ he asks in a bullying tone.
‘Now it’s coming,’ she thinks helplessly. But she says nothing. What’s the use of talking to him?
‘Answer me!’ He jumps up and stands over her, his fist coming down in a nerve-shattering thump on the table, making the cups jump and rattle and slop the dregs of cold tea into their saucers.
The agonizing squeak of the fan seems to be trying in vain to drown the noise of his heavy breathing. She knows the superior look she can’t stand must be on his face, so she doesn’t look up or see how strangely his eyes are glittering. We were having tea.’ She can hardly bring herself to answer him, and speaks the words with difficulty.
But to the hearer her low voice sounds indifferent. It certainly isn’t apologetic this and the way she refuses to look at him drives him nearly frantic. ‘What sort of a bloody fool do you take me for?’ he explodes. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know you’ve been seeing him every day?’
Is she really expected to answer this? It seems too idiotic. Although she still hasn’t raised her head she’s aware all the time of him looming over her menacingly, and feels somewhat apprehensive. She wouldn’t mind if he’d kill her outright, but is afraid he may beat her up. At the same time, he seems quite insignificant — her friendship with Suede Boots is responsible for the new and more critical attitude she adopts towards him. He seems like some base object, repulsive and disgusting, with his incredible arrogance where in the world did he get this grotesquely high opinion of himself? Let him do the quarrelling she’s not going to argue. Overwhelmed by the utter futility of saying anything to him, since he neither listens nor understands, she simply remains silent.
The man thinks she’s provoking him intentionally trying to drive him out of his mind — by not apologizing or even speaking. The glint in his eyes can’t be described as normal, as he shouts at her: ‘He’s not to come into the house again ever! Do you hear?’ She still doesn’t open her mouth even now, and he seizes her by the shoulders and shakes her violently to and fro, as if to shake it open, but only succeeds in shaking the book out of her hand. ‘I won’t have him walking past the compound either — if he does, I’ll set the chuprassi on him!’ Hardly knowing what he’s saying he adds a few more abusive, threatening phrases at random, while continuing to shake her furiously.
But after a moment he begins to feel baffled, deflated. He can’t go on shaking her forever, and he has no idea what else to do. He can’t discover any way of forcing his will upon her. It’s absolutely maddening to be so frustrated: but there seems to be nothing he can do about it. The next thing is that he has to let her go.
Still she hasn’t uttered one word of apology, contrition, or anything else. All that’s happened is that her hair has been shaken loose and falls forward untidily, the fine, freshly-washed hair separating into two masses, one on each side of her face, which it hides completely, showing only the back of her neck.
Gazing down at the pale nape of her neck, extended before him like that of a victim, he feels the mounting pressure of violence inside him, a rabid frenzy of rage which frightens him suddenly — all at once he’s afraid of what it might make him do. Swinging round abruptly he strides away from her and out of the room.
It is evening, after dinner. The girl is sitting reading, alone under the squeaky fan. Her husband hasn’t spoken to her all day. The few remarks he made at the dinner table were for the benefit of the servants, before whom a facade of normal conduct must be maintained. She doesn’t know where he is now, or what he is doing. He may be somewhere in the house. Or he may have gone to the club. She hasn’t heard the car drive away, but this doesn’t necessarily mean he’s still here, as he sometimes walks this short distance.
He is not in the habit of telling her when he goes out. He seems to keep her in ignorance of his movements deliberately, hoping to take her by surprise, as he’s done occasionally when she’s been relaxing under the impression that she was alone in the house. It’s as though he perpetually suspects her of doing wrong, and is eagerly waiting to catch her in the act again. This is why her attitude remains tense. She keeps her eyes unwaveringly on her book, although the light is really too faint for reading. Presently she puts the book down on a table and rubs her eyes, afterwards sitting quite still, her wide open eyes looking towards the door.
The noise of the frogs fills the night, as the brain-fever birds’ cries fill the day. The two sounds are interchangeable in her head, composing one continuous, exasperating background sound, without end or beginning, that finds its way into every single second of the day and night. Not for one of all those seconds has she ever felt at home in this house. She has no clear impression of the darkened country outside; it is to her just a feeling of alien, burning brilliance, heat and confusion, and of mysterious nocturnal cries that burst unaccountably out of solid blackness.
Her gaze does not leave the door, and now, under the two flaps, in the lighted passage beyond, she sees a pair of slim brown ankles approaching, and the border of the red skirt belonging to the young woman who looks after her clothes, prepares her bath, and so on, who, unlike the Mahommedans, is a native of the country. Her appearance so late in the evening is puzzling, since she is off duty and ought to be at home.
There is a certain elegance about the red skirt, shot with gold, above which is worn an exceedingly abbreviated white jacket, a wide expanse of smooth brown flesh exposed between the two garments. The wearer’s movements are supple, graceful and self-possessed. Although her face has not got the blank look worn by most of the other servants, it is no more accessible; its expression, lively but unconcerned, seems to impose a sheet of glass between her and her mistress, who is several years younger. She looks at her amicably but remotely, keeping herself apart, unapproachable. Or perhaps it is the girl who has never made any attempt to approach her. At all events, there is no contact between them.
‘The other master has come.’ This announcement is made in a soft voice that might sound cautious, were it not for the calm, matter of fact way the speaker is adjusting the comb which controls her long coil of oiled hair, black and shiny as patent leather.
The words are so totally unexpected that the girl looks at her with a startled face, uncomprehending. A familiar voice then calls to her softly from outside the room: ‘Come out here for a second — I must speak to you!’
Immediately she jumps up and runs to the window giving access to the verandah, passing the messenger without seeing her, not giving her another thought. The latter quietly closes the shutters after she’s gone out, then leaves the room through the door she’s just entered, moving with her soft, loose gait, and swaying her hips, the soles of her light slippers (worn with the little toe outside the embroidered upper part) hitting the floor with a muffled slap that is hard to hear above the noise the frogs make.
The girl’s progress along the dark verandah can be followed by the very similar slight slap of her sandals on the wooden floor. The soft-soled mosquito boots advancing to meet her make no noise at all, even when the frog chorus is silenced momentarily by one exceptionally deep croaking boom, after which it at once starts again.
It’s pitch dark out here, without a breath of air. There is no moon. The faint ghostly sheen of starlight over the swamp doesn’t reach to the compound. Only a thin pencilling of parallel light lines marks the position of shuttered windows. The roofed verandah is like a black tunnel of airless heat, where the paleness of clothes, faces and limbs can only be guessed at, not even discernible as lighter blurs on the black.