Rosalie’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.
“Why did you not tell me that you helped the man who was wounded?” she began, as I went back into the room.
“It didn’t seem important.”
“It has made a very good impression. That man is his friend. He told me he would bring us more fruit later.”
“You mean they’ve decided not to kill us after all?”
“Oh no, but now they do not hate us so much.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“He told me that there are machine guns being mounted on both sides of the roof in case there is another air attack, also that the Nasjah army is advancing from the direction of Meja.”
“How does he know that-I mean about the army?”
“He heard one of the officers on the telephone. It is curious,” she went on thoughtfully; “before, that man would not have looked at us except to think how it would feel to kill us. Now, because you bandage his friend, it is different. He speaks to us and brings us fruit.”
“That’s because of the bombing, and because we were all covered in dust just as he was. He’s not used to air attack. He was frightened, and now because he isn’t dead he feels generous and friendly and wants to talk. It’s nothing to do with my bandaging his friend. It always happens. Besides,” I added, “you’re a woman. That would make a difference, too.”
She thought for a moment or two and then nodded. “Yes, I understand. It was the way I felt when the men with the parangs did not kill us last night. I wanted you to take me to bed at once. If it had not been for the guns beginning to fire and making me frightened in another way …”
I kissed her, and she smiled. “Was it like that in the war?” she said. “When you had been very frightened of being killed or wounded and were not, did you always want a woman afterwards?”
“Well, there wasn’t much to be frightened of building airfields, and when we were in the desert there weren’t any women to have.”
“But you would want one?” she persisted.
“Oh yes. There was nothing to stop you wanting.”
“Now you are making a joke of it. I think it is very good that people should feel that way.”
“There’s a simple biological explanation.”
“Is it biology that I am here with you?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“No. It is because it is good for a man and a woman to have pleasure together. If they are sympathetic, that is …”
“And if they aren’t being threatened by men with parangs, and bombed, and peered at by sentries.”
She looked startled, but did not turn her head. “He is watching us now?”
“With great interest.”
Without once letting her eyes stray in his direction, she walked over to the window and looked up at the torn curtains. “If you will take these down,” she said, “I will pin the pieces together. Then we can put them back again as we wish. If we do it now, he will think it is because of the sun. If we wait until the sun has moved, he will know that we do not wish to be seen and will be offended.”
“All right.”
It was a good idea in any case. The sentry had managed to hoist the bamboo roof back into position, but the blast and débris had split it in several places, and the sun was pouring through the gaps into the room. Every slight movement raised the dust again, and even the sight of it swirling about in the shafts of sunlight made me thirsty.
I made a great show of shielding my eyes from the glare as I unhooked the curtains. The sentry, squatting in one of the patches of shade, watched idly while Rosalie, with the few pins and a needle and thread that she had in her case, tacked the pieces of curtain together. When I put them up again, I was able to cover almost the whole of the window space.
Since the air attack, the telephone in the next room had been in constant use, but the voices had been those of the junior officers. I had concluded that Sanusi, Roda and Suparto had temporarily abandoned the sixth floor for some less exposed command post. When, as I finished rehanging the curtains, I heard footsteps crunching towards us over the broken glass on the terrace, I assumed that it was the bow-legged officer on his way to the bathhouse. Then, the footsteps ceased, the curtains were brushed aside and Major Suparto stepped into the room.
I saw Rosalie freeze into the passive immobility with which she had faced him before, but he did not even glance at her. He looked at the ceiling, at the débris piled in one corner of the room, finally at the curtains.
“Aren’t these repairs a waste of time, Mr. Fraser?”
“I don’t think so.”
There was no trace of plaster dust on his uniform. I guessed that he had been in the corridor when the ceilings of the apartment had come down.
“The planes may be returning soon,” he said.
“They will have to score a direct hit to do any more damage here. And I understand that you are putting machine guns on the roof. If they couldn’t manage to hit the place before, they’re not likely to do better when they’re under fire.”
“I hope you’re right, Mr. Fraser. Now, I am sorry to disturb you, but you must come with me.”
The knot in my stomach tightened. “Where to?”
“I will show you.”
“Both of us?”
“Only you.”
“Shall I be coming back here?”
“I am not taking you to be executed, if that is what you mean. If you behave intelligently it is possible that you will be sent back here. Now, please.”
Rosalie had not moved. There was nothing I could do to reassure her. I pressed her arm and followed Suparto out on to the terrace. He turned into the living room.
The sentry stared blankly as I crunched past him.
The living room was in a wretched state. No attempt had been made to clear the rubble. Two pictures were lying on the floor. Some of the chairs had gone.
There were three officers there, one of them on the telephone. Suparto stopped and addressed himself to the bow-legged one.
“Nobody is to go into the next room unless this Englishman is there,” he said. “Is that understood?”
“Ya, tuan.” He eyed me curiously.
Suparto nodded to me.
I followed him out into the passage, past a sentry and down the stairs to the next floor. There were two more sentries on guard at the swing doors. As Suparto approached they stood aside for him to pass.
The ceiling had come down in the corridor beyond, and some of the doors belonging to the offices leading off it were propped against the walls. Just beyond the main stairway landing, a group of officers stood outside an office door listening to a captain reading out orders for the requisitioning of rice. They made way for Suparto and I followed him through an office, where a man sat loading machine-gun magazines, to a door marked “TECHNICAL CONTROLLER.” Suparto knocked on the door and went in.
There were three men in the room: Sanusi, Roda and a man in civilian clothes whom I recognised as the editor of a Selampang newspaper subsidised by the Nasjah Government. I had met him when he had visited Tangga with a party of other journalists; but if he now remembered me, the memory was inconvenient, for he gave me no more than a blank stare. Sanusi and Roda were reading a copy of a printed proclamation which was spread out on the desk. Suparto and I stood just inside the door, waiting. When the reading was finished, there was a muttered conference between the three men, and then the editor took the proclamation away. Sanusi looked at me.
“Mr. Fraser, Boeng.” Suparto prodded me forward.
I went up to the desk. Sanusi examined me thoughtfully as I approached, but it was Colonel Roda, sitting at the corner of the desk, who spoke.
“You are an engineer?”
“Yes.”
“At Tangga Valley?”
“I have been resident consulting engineer there for the past three years.”
“Then you are a fully qualified and experienced person, no?”
I did not hear this properly for the first time. He spoke English with a Dutch accent, but it was his determination to be peremptory that made it difficult to understand. He had broad, fleshy lips, and the words rattled about in his mouth like pebbles.