Ever since sunrise the brain-fever birds have been c ailing out their perpetual question, and now the full power of the sun is relentlessly pouring down heat on the burnt-up land, which has hardly had time to cool off during the dark hours.
The girl stands at her window, looking over the marsh. This flat sea of swampy ground, covered with large fleshy leaves, extends to the very edge of the compound, separated from it only by a ramshackle fence, beyond which is a footpath, built up above the mud. She has watched, either on this path or the road, first, a silent, ghostly sunrise procession of yellow-robed priests with their black begging-bowls; then various groups of brown people with flowers behind their ears, bringing offerings to the giant sacred snake that lives in the tall forest trees, left standing when the land was cleared for building the house. (Though gigantic, this reptile is harmless, gorged on the birds and small animals presented to it, which it consumes alive, and is usually to be seen among the lower branches, its pallid length looped and dangling.) A party of little men from the hills has also trotted by, carrying loads of bananas to some distant market.
The last person to use the marsh path was a white man, quite young, wearing the regular tropical uniform of bush jacket and shorts, with the addition of soft leather mosquito boots. Every day he passes four times, coming from and going to his place of work. The girl has a fellow feeling for him because of his youth: he hasn’t been out here long enough to lose his fresh complexion; his face has not yet hardened out of its youthful sensitivity. Because of the distinctive item of his attire, she always thinks of him as ‘the man in suede boots,’ and knows he won’t appear again now before midday. But, paralysed by the heat, she still stands gazing out at a patch of black ooze between the bog plants, where iridescent shimmers reflect the sky. Probably it’s because she can’t get used to the climate that she feels so strange all the time, and can’t get used to her life in this country either.
Is it her life? It hardly seems so. A picture comes to her of her schoolfriends, enjoying themselves in pretty dresses and gay surroundings, or else at the university, as she ought to be. Who am I? she wonders vaguely. Why am I here? Is she the girl who won the scholarship last year? Or the girl living in this awful heat, with the stranger who’s married her for some unknown reason, with whom it’s impossible to communicate? Her questions remain unanswered; both alternatives seem equally dreamlike, unreal. Somehow she seems to have lost contact with her existence…
She gives up the problem, and, in a gesture become automatic, raises both hands to lift the hair off her neck — the dampness of the flesh makes her aware of the sweltering heat (these upper rooms with their wooden walls are uninhabitable during the day, no better than ovens), and that it’s long past the time when she generally hears her husband drive off to his office, a fact she’s half consciously been ignoring. Deciding reluctantly to find out what’s happening, from force of habit she first picks up a comb, but immediately drops it as it is too hot to hold. Then she goes out between the wooden flaps, which spring back into place behind her.
In the second room, her eyes avoid the wardrobe made in the jail, and keep to the floor, which is covered in stains, almost as if she were looking for a special mark. This is how she suddenly finds herself about to collide with a barefooted youth in a white turban, who is being trained as Mohammed’s successor, and has just silently climbed the stairs with a jug of water. The normal course of his duties does not bring him up here at this hour, so she makes a perfunctory effort to assert herself by asking what he is doing.
The jug prevents him from putting his palms together in a formal salute, so he bends his head, making the obeisance as mechanically as he performs any trick he is taught — it seems no more a sign of respect than of any other feeling, or of none. ‘Master, he has fever.’ Devoid of expression, his big black eyes appear depthless, almost like those of an animal, as he gives the information with no trace of feeling.
All the servants look at her in this blank way that hides their feelings and thoughts—if they have any. This particular boy speaks good English, but arranges his sentences oddly, and announces all news, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, in the same flat voice, as though the words have no meaning for him.
The girl precedes him now into the third room, which the sun hasn’t reached yet, so that a very faint trace of the night’s comparative coolness still lingers, combined with the stale smell of whisky. She stops just inside the door, astonished by her husband’s sick face, which nevertheless contrives to look overbearing and extremely bad tempered, as he submits to the ministrations of Mohammed Dirwaza Khan, who is too preoccupied even to notice her arrival. In response to an order in his own language the youth puts down the jug, and departs precipitately. The bearded Moslem continues to pile blankets upon the bed; which so amazes the on-looker, who’s never before witnessed an attack of malaria, that she allows some expression of incredulity, such as, ‘In this heat…?’ to escape from her unawares.
The patient hears, and, struggling up to confront her, bares his teeth in a sort of snarling grimace.
‘Idiot! Can’t you see I’m freezing to death?’ His teeth are, in fact, chattering loudly, convulsive shudders shake through him, his grimacing mouth can hardly bring out the words: ‘Are you satisfied with what you’ve done? This is all your fault…’
‘Mine?’ She stares at him, horrified, almost believing he’s really about to give up the ghost.
‘Yes, yours! Why did you have to let in all those mosquitoes? I’ve told you a million times they carry infection.’ Falling back exhausted, he mumbles: ‘You’d like to see the end of me, wouldn’t you?’
‘Oh, no!’ She’s suddenly shocked into feeling sorry for him — ‘didn’t mean… didn’t understand…’ But then she falters into silence, not knowing what to say.
The man is not in the least placated. He heaves himself up again, exposing his whole torso, to which the furlike hair is now damply clinging. Cursing incomprehensibly, he tries to throw off the covers, but the effort proves too great, and he collapses again, exclaiming weakly: ‘Leave me alone! You make me sick!’
The girl hesitates for a moment, torn between a desire to escape, a feeling of guilt, and a mixture of repugnance and pity for the speaker, on whose face great drops of sweat are now starting out.
‘Better misses go now.’ The servant’s voice has no trace of emotion, he doesn’t even look round, still stooping over the bed. His large blackish hand, with its paler pink palm and fingertips, grasps a clean folded handkerchief, with which he gently and efficiently wipes away the sweat on his master’s face, while the latter gasps: ‘Yes — get out… and stay out!’
A second longer she stands there unhappily, her feelings divided, listening to the monotonous voice murmuring soothingly as to a child as the big dark hands deftly smooth the blankets over the prostrate form, whose spasmodic shudders are still visible through the mass of bedclothes, accompanied by semi-delirious mutterings.
Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Sudden and piercingly loud a brain-fever bird’s cry sounds startlingly close, as if it were in the room, drowning all other sounds. Numerous birds all round the house call back the same question, and a whole explosion of identical cries breaks out on all sides at once.
The eternal Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Who-are-you? repeated from the tamarinds at the back, from the palm in front, from the trees where the snake lives, from the banana trees just outside, from the marsh, from the bushes screening the servants’ quarters, and from further away, creates an exasperating din that seems as though it will really go on forever. The earsplitting, monotonous repetition continues like an infuriating machine-noise nobody knows how to stop.