Under a high sky dimmed by a melancholy autumn fog, the shotguns popped without echoes. They sounded almost harmless, as if someone were shooting into a paper bag for a joke.
“Hold the dog. Don’t let her go!” Nagar squealed, and two servants dragged along the spotted Trompette, who tugged at her leash after every shot, barking frantically. Her eyes were bloodshot and her teeth chattered as saliva leaked from her muzzle. “She is like a wife who does not see the ducks that have been shot, but only scolds at every miss,” he said chattily to the Partridge twins.
Fanny, freckled, plain but energetic and full of the journalist’s temperament, wrote for women’s magazines and traveled a great deal. Her specialty was exotic customs — in short, erotic practices of Papuans and Polynesians, wooden codpieces elaborately carved by tribes in Borneo, matters bordering on witchcraft, primitive medicine and poisoning, which very moral, wizened Englishwomen read about with blushes.
Her sister was always in her shadow, a homely, obliging girl whose blue eyes were perpetually wide with astonishment, whose frizzy hair was the color of straw and whose name was Anna, though everyone called her Moufi — even her sister — and she placidly assented. She helped her famous twin; she was something of a photographer. She adored Fanny, whom she regarded as a woman with no equal. Neither shot; they only helped start up the birds. Fanny stepped watchfully, beating about the high grass, while Anna waited for her sister’s orders with her camera at the ready.
Nagar, in a light linen hat and carrying his bag, wearing field glasses on his chest and a belt gleaming with the brass cartridges he had tucked into it, seemed most impressive to them, particularly with his endless narrative of tiger hunting. They exchanged significant looks. Moufi signaled to her sister: there’s a story for you, and Fanny responded: I already noticed that, but you remember, too, because it might come in handy.
The twins had never parted since their parents had died in the bombardment of London. Rumors circulated about the pair: they were called “the Partridges” like a married couple, and one was never invited anywhere without the other. Jokes at their expense they took in good part, and often told racy anecdotes about themselves that made them almost universally popular.
In the listless air, sluggish lines of smoke spread like gray cobwebs. Cooks, surrounded by a cluster of people from the villages, squatted by the fires, stoking them with thorny branches and sheaves of stalks. Vultures kept watch from the bare tops of old trees, clapping their sides with their hard wings after the shots as if registering their approval of the slaughter of the birds.
Istvan had not brought his cook, since he assumed that Nagar would insist that he join him for dinner. He had come with Dorothy Shankar, who was turned out in hunting garb. Instead of a sari, she wore a plaid flannel shirt with pockets over her small breasts. Her outfit, completed by a belt and riding boots, aroused general delight. In her hand she carried a light single-barreled fowling piece. She was excited; she talked so unstintingly of her home and family that Istvan did not need to exert himself to entertain her. The driver, a gloomy Sikh, kept looking in the mirror to see what Terey was doing, since he was silent while the girl burst into seductive laughter. Her huge eyes were a velvety black; her cherry-colored lips and the dimple on her swarthy cheek lured with a virginal freshness.
Yet it was with relief that he left her to the Partridges, who, delighted with her beauty, unceremoniously forced her to let them take her picture with the gun raised.
“I’m ordering photos!” From behind a strip of tall grass the American reporter raised two fingers. “I’d rather have them than ducks.”
“I’m not giving you any, Bradley!” Fanny declared. “You’ll use them to impress your friends and tell them that she is your fiancee.”
Miss Shankar listened blushing, with the barrel of the gun aimed at the sky, paralyzed from waiting for the click of the shutter. “Is it over?” she asked, like a child playing hide and seek. “May I move now? I would like to shoot one round at least. Mr. Nagar is cracking away like a machine gun, frightening the ducks for miles.”
Terey slipped quietly in among clumps of plants with wilting leaves; the fermenting vegetation smelled like tobacco. He waded through grasses, yellowed from the summer drought, which crunched under his steps. He made his way toward an old stream bed where rapids glistened like a freshly sharpened sickle through the dun-colored weeds.
The spongy quagmire, streaming with water that made sucking noises, gave under his rubber soles, but on the layered webbing of enormous grasses it was possible to step securely. Through denim pants that fit closely around his ankles he felt the rough, sticky edges of the grass scratching like innumerable claws. Sometimes something rustled in the reeds; his ear caught the fluttering and then it subsided again. Only the crickets twittered in two tones as if commanding him to be watchful.
I’ve lost the knack for socializing, he reproached himself. I’ve grown unused to being with people. It’s just as well they haven’t noticed yet how much the last months have altered me. I really am avoiding everyone! I’m not looking for ducks, only the chance to be alone.
Behind him walked a young Hindu in a turban formed from a soiled rag, carelessly wound. The end fell to the back of his neck, shielding it from the maddening flies. He followed at a distance of a dozen paces or more, now dropping back, now moving forward, always keeping Istvan in sight but never intruding. Even his footsteps created no distraction.
“Sahib”—he put his hands to his mouth, but alerted Istvan in a whisper—“there. Two fat ducks.”
In the shadow of overhanging branches, hardly rippling the olive-colored water, a pair of teals swam close together. Istvan shook his head and waved, then took down the gun he had hung from his neck and leveled it as if to shoot into the air. The other man nodded and bolted into the bushes. He raised a hand, then threw a piece of rotting root into the undergrowth so that it splashed. The ducks flailed in the water, which seemed to cling to their wings, before sputtering into the air over the thicket. Istvan let them fly up so the ricochet from his shot would not graze the Hindu; they struggled to rise high above the clumps of reeds. The shot swished through the air. One duck fell like a stone, rattling dully on the ground. The other flew on, quacking in mortal terror. Whitish down stripped away by the lead pellets lingered behind her in the air.
Suddenly, as if her beak had struck a windowpane, she whirled and, hammering with her wings, burrowed into the dense mesh of grasses.
“Beautiful shot.” He heard a husky voice behind him and saw Major Stowne in washed-out denim standing motionless in the reeds. With the dark barrel of his shotgun protruding, he reminded Istvan of a heron.
“I’m sorry,” Terey faltered, embarrassed. “I didn’t see you, sir. I wouldn’t have barged in.”
“That was just the point: for me not to be seen. You will pass on; I will stay. You all scare the birds and they move over here, where it’s calm — just under my barrel. Have a look.” He pushed aside a shock of overhanging grasses with his boot and showed Istvan several birds that he had killed. “I have no complaints. See, there on the wing. Shoot.”
From the direction of the camp, where the chatter of gunfire never stopped, flew a little flock of ducks — five, seven, Terey counted, moving his barrel into position. He had no qualms now as he drew a bead on the first three. He fired and one began its fall, finally striking a shrub amid a shower of yellowed leaves.
Stowne did not even bend over to collect his birds. He only whispered to summon the villager. The Hindu was caked with mud to his thighs; the sash on his hips was soaking. He held the upturned lower edge of his shirt in his teeth and shook the spoils of the shooting. He stood in the sun, trembling from the chill and perhaps with excitement, for he grinned broadly.