Jane said, “You can telephone him and congratulate him on being a minister.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “You can say that Merry looked for what he got.”
Jane said, “Did you see the airplane on Monday afternoon?”
“Girl, I can’t tell you the stories. If everybody who they say leave was on that plane, the damn thing wouldn’t have got off the ground.”
Roche said, “It isn’t only Mrs. Grandlieu who can’t get to the airport.”
Jane ignored this. She said to Harry, “But the place just can’t stay like this. It can’t just turn into a great ripe cheese.”
Roche looked at her. He said, “Why not?” It was the first time he had spoken to her for two days, and the words held all his secreted rage.
Jane continued to look at Harry. Her eyes went moist; she took the coffee cup to her lips and held it there.
Harry, responding to Jane’s eyes, and then looking away, began talking, softly at first, and slowly. He said, “Those guys down there don’t know what they’re doing. All this talk of independence, but they don’t really believe that times have changed. They still feel they’re just taking a chance, and that when the show is over somebody is going to go down there and start dishing out licks. And they half want it to be over, you know. They would go crazy if somebody tell them that this time nobody might be going down to dish out licks and pick up the pieces.”
Jane looked at Harry while he spoke. Roche saw the look in her eyes: the violated. His anger grew again.
Roche said, almost shouted, “They know what they’re doing. They’re pulling the place down.”
Harry said uneasily, “All right, boss.”
Jane said, still looking at Harry, “So what are we to do?’ ”
Harry said, “What are we to do? Nothing. We can only sit tight and wait.”
Roche, looking between them, addressing neither of them, said, “The world isn’t what it was. So it must go up in flames.”
Harry stood up. “Jane, I want to make a telephone call.”
She said, “You can use the one in the sitting room.”
“No, it’s nothing private. I’ll use the one here.”
He went to the wall telephone near the door that opened into the garage, and he began to dial.
Roche leaned across the white breakfast table and brought his face close to Jane’s. She saw a face of pure hatred: the face whose existence she had intuited ever since that day when, too late, already committed to him and this adventure, she had seen him grin and had seen his long, black-rooted molars.
He said violently, “Yes, it’s going up in flames. But it’s taking you with it.”
Harry said into the telephone, “Bertie. Harry.”
Jane caught Harry’s pronunciation of his name: she understood now that he pronounced it Hah-ree when he used the name by itself, without his surname.
“But, Bertie, you’re like the Scarlet Pimpernel these days. How you liking the little excitement? … Still, I glad I catch you. Bertie, what the hell is happening? Your paper is telling me nothing. The damn thing is more like a crossword puzzle these days. Clues down and across all over the place. You saving up the solution for next week? … I understand … I understand the position.… But that is damn good news, man. If it is true.… Well, stick in a little something for us too, nuh … I don’t know. I hear some people talking about vigilante patrols.… I agree with you, Bertie. We don’t want to be provocative neither. To tell you the truth, I was thinking more of something like Ridge Residents Starve Dogs. I think there may be one or two guys down there who ought to be informed that the dogs up here haven’t fed since Sunday … no big fuss, but don’t lose it in the paper. Page one or page two, nuh … I wouldn’t say it is too obscure. It is a fairly straight message to whom it may concern. And is a nice little story too, I think.… All right, Bertie-boy. I’ll be reading the paper tomorrow please God.… ‘Please God’? Yes, man, these days we all start talking like the old people.”
He came back to the breakfast table. Jane and Roche were sitting silent, not looking at one another.
Harry said, “Good news. If it’s true. Bertie says he thinks the police are holding out. It was just that airplane on Monday. It demoralized a lot of people.”
Jane filled the coffee cups again, and they all went out on the porch. Jane cleared away the sodden newspaper, and she and Harry wiped the wet table and chairs.
When they were all seated, Harry said, “Can you imagine this green, Jane?”
She said, “It was green when I came. But that’s how it always is. I always have to imagine what I’m missing.”
Roche said, “Did Bertie say anything about the government?”
“He didn’t say anything. But I assume the boys are still in control. The only lucky thing is that none of the big guys have been killed yet. Because, once that kind of killing starts, it isn’t going to stop. It’s going to be South America for a couple of generations. Meredith frightened me on Sunday. He talked about Jimmy Ahmed as though he wanted to kill the man. I’d never heard anything like that before. But that was when they were dressing Merry up to throw him to the crowd. Now the two of them have to run.”
Roche said, “So Jimmy is washed up?”
“I think so. According to what I hear. Nobody is mentioning him anymore. He gambled and lost.”
Roche said, “I can’t imagine Jimmy taking that kind of gamble. I wonder whether things didn’t just happen around him.”
Harry said, “Jimmy was always washed up here. I don’t know who told him otherwise. I don’t know what they told him in London. But at a time like this he is just another Chinaman.”
Roche said, “I suppose I’m washed up too.”
Harry said, “I wouldn’t say so.”
Roche smiled. “Sablich’s will also want to dress up somebody to throw to the crowd.”
Harry said, “Let us listen to the news, nuh. Bring out the radio, nuh, Jane. They had a little thing on it last night. I don’t know whether you hear it. ‘The causes of the disturbances are still not clear.’ ”
She went and got their plastic-cased transistor and tuned it to the local station. Bringing Christ to the Nation ended. The announcer hurried through a commercial, identified his station; and the news from London was relayed. Reception was good. There was nothing on the headlines, nothing during the first half of the news. Then it came, after an item about Argentina.
“… still tense after two days of rioting. Earlier reports of police desertions and the resignation of the government have now been officially denied. Government sources now say that the police have returned in strength to most areas of the capital from which they had previously withdrawn, and that most services are working normally. There are no reports of casualties. The causes of the disturbance are still not clear. But a correspondent in the area says in a despatch to the BBC that speculation about a concerted anti-government rebellion can be discounted. It seems more likely, the correspondent adds, that the disturbances were sparked off by radical youth groups protesting against unemployment and what they see as continued foreign domination of the economy …”
Jane said, “I’m glad to know what it’s all about.”
Harry said, “You mean about the ‘foreign domination.’ But in the end, you know, that is what those guys down there would believe they were doing. Because what they’re doing is too crazy.”
“That’s how it will go down in the books,” Roche said. “That’s how it will be discussed. That’s what you can start believing yourself. And start acting on.”
Dazzle, like the dazzle of the sea, came to a part of the city: the new tin roofs of the shantytown redevelopment, catching the sun.