“Wait in the drive,” I said.
“Six rupees,” he said. “Pay six rupees.”
“I’ll pay you afterwards.”
He went on trotting at my side on his bare brown feet. He was skinny and old and very angry, and his old moustache was like a brush that had seen better days. I let him come on a hundred yards, and then because his presence became suddenly irritating, I turned on him ferociously.
“Go back and wait!” I said.
He stopped and stared at me uncertainly, and with self-conscious defiance he repeated, “Six rupees.” I went on and left him standing.
I walked along the avenue, where the street lamps lit the dry dusty leaves of the trees with a yellow light. The moon had risen high now and was very bright, and the sky was pale all around it. In the air was the dry dust, and my feet were dusty on the pavements.
But I was thinking only of the clean, fan-cooled hospital bedroom and Sabby’s face on the pillow. I thought of Sabby’s lips, warm and soft and passionate against my own, and her living hands. I did not believe that she was going to die. I did not believe that her body could be dead, nor that the deep well of affection and gentleness in her eyes could dry up. Sabby was warm and living, and I loved her and she could not die. And knowing this, a new joy grew in me, grew out of all the heavy dread in my belly like a profusion of blossoms growing suddenly out of the heavy, dark trunk of a cactus. I felt buoyant, loving everything, the dust and the dirty figures huddled on the pavement and the angry tonga-man. And I loved Sabby exultantly; the love kept rising in me afresh, rising like the swell of a tide, and was in me everywhere, in my back and my shoulders, and like a soothing ointment in my encased arm.
It was half-past eleven, and I turned back, walking swiftly.
When I arrived at the hospital gates it was ten minutes too soon. I might have gone in; but I thought if I went in then I should have to leave ten minutes earlier. I wanted to go on looking forward to going into her room and saying good night. So I waited outside.
When I went in it was very still in the hospital, and my footsteps echoed in the corridors. There seemed to be nobody about. The corridors were dim because only a few lights had been left burning. I was thinking as I went: it will be terrible, just saying good night and then leaving her. It will be like going away for months. I would like to sleep outside the door like Bahadur, and then I could look in at her often and sometimes kiss her in her sleep.
I went down the last passage. I heard a door opening, and the Sister came out. It was Sabby’s door. The Sister came slowly along the polished floor towards me. She walked as though she was very tired. And then she stopped and I went on towards her, but I did not pass her because she had stopped in the middle of the corridor and she was looking at me with her tired eyes.
“I will really only be five minutes,” I said.
“The doctor is in there now,” she said.
“Do you want me to wait?”
She said nothing; her headdress was beautifully white but her eyes were very tired and grey.
“Well?” I said.
“You did know this would happen, didn’t you?”
“What would happen?” I said.
“Half an hour ago—she died suddenly.”
“Died?” I said. “Sabby?”
She nodded, and all I could see was her face nodding and nodding in the pale electric light, and her grieved eyes watching me framed in their white linen.
“Yes,” she said, and I heard her voice through clouds as though it came from another world. “We knew it would happen suddenly. And without any pain. There was no pain at all. She was very happy when she died. She told me after you left that she knew she was going to die. She didn’t want it to be long for your sake, and it was just as she wanted it. She wanted you to know she was happy.” I felt her hand on my left arm. “You would like to see her?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to see her. I couldn’t bear to see her not living.”
“You would like to rest here, then?”
“No, I don’t want to rest.”
“There is nothing we can do for you?”
“No, there’s nothing,” I said.
Chapter Eight
(1)
I went back between the blurred walls. I caught a last glimpse of the Sister as I turned the corner, motionless in the corridor staring after me. Then I saw all the doors go by, and the Indian clerk at the desk in the entrance hunched over his book. I went out and down the steps.
A figure stood in front of me—a yellow turban, and brown face—talking to me. I could only hear his voice faintly. I tried to remember who he was; and then I saw the horse and tonga, and it came back to me, like something out of time long past. It came into my consciousness, and then it sank again like a piece of wreckage on the surface of the sea, and I simply stood there waiting to grasp it again. At last I heard myself saying:
“I’ll get your fare for you . . .”
I turned and went back up the steps and along the corridors, and somewhere I ran into Bahadur. We stared at each other for a long time. He tried to say something, but only his throat moved.
“I’ve got no money,” I said.
His hand went slowly to his shirt pocket. He pulled out all the notes there and held them out to me without looking at them. I went through them and found a ten-rupee note and handed the rest back. He shook his head, so I put them in his pocket for him.
“I have to pay a tonga,” I said.
He managed to say:
“We will go back to the hotel now?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not going back.”
“You have no place to sleep.”
“I’ll find somewhere,” I said. “I’m not going back to the room.”
“You will need Bahadur.”
“I’m going by myself.”
“Tonight you must have Bahadur to take care of you.”
“No,” I said. “You stay here, and I’ll come in the morning.”
I went out again, and the tonga-man came out of the shadows and stretched out his hand. I put the note into it, and he examined it carefully, then he touched his turban and grunted and went back to his tonga, and I heard the tinkle of the horse’s bell as he went off down the drive.
I began to walk along the pavements under the dry trees. The night air was still hot and the moon was high and vivid. White clad figures passed me like ghosts. I walked on anywhere, without effort, without thinking. I saw a few shop signs, and then the entrance to a cinema with the last-house crowds coming out in a waft of cool air. Then the window of Davico’s. I remembered it had been at Davico’s that I had met Peter after my convalescence in Simla, and it was there that I had first heard of going to Bombay. This came with a burst of pain; but the pain soon died. Inside I felt utterly dead. I somehow did not think of Sabby.
I came to the circle of grass. A few beggars and couples and drunks were lying about, and here and there was a bed of flowers. The moon drained out the colour from the flowers, but some were night-scented and the air was heavy with their perfume. I moved out of their aura, loathing it. I did not want to look at or smell the flowers. I wandered away and lay down. The ground was hard like a board. I dropped my head back, and there was nothing but the sky, livid with the moon. I tried to think about the moon, but my brain had stopped functioning. I could only feel deadness, immensely heavy deadness, weighing me down to the dry, hard earth.
It seemed longer than all the rest of my lifetime that I lay there. But when I got up the hands of a clock in the circus only pointed to one o’clock, a single hour since the Sister had stood in the corridor with tired grey eyes. I started to walk again. A new weariness had come over me and I had to drag my feet. I made myself walk, because I wanted to tire myself out and drop down and die: only I was afraid. I would not die, but would wake up from a w
eary sleep to something that was worse than death.
I saw the brightly lit entrance of an hotel, and I turned into the drive. It was a huge modern building, white and floodlit. I went up the steps. At the reception-desk in the hall there was an Indian in evening dress.
“I want a room,” I said.
“I am sorry,” he said, smiling apologetically. “That is impossible. We are booked up until June.”
“Put me anywhere—it’s only for tonight.”
He looked all over me, at my dirty green clothes and my arm in plaster. He felt sorry for me because of my plaster.
“I will try,” he said. “Wait, please. I will inquire.” He picked up the telephone.
I waited, but I did not care much what happened. I had to wait a long time, walking up and down the big hall. I was still waiting when I saw a man and a woman come in together through the doorway. They were very smartly dressed and handsome, and their arms were linked. The woman had soft hair brushed in a sweep over her shoulders. They came the length of the hallway, and then they saw me, and hesitated and stopped, and it was Mario and Dorcas.
“Michael!” Mario said. Only there was a questioning note in his voice because he was not certain that it was me.
“Mario.”
“My God,” he said, “I thought you were . . . Oh, my God,” he said. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
“When did you leave Imphal?”
I could not think at first. The truth seemed impossible. Then I worked it out.
“This morning,” I said.
“But what are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to book a room. What are you doing?”
“We were married yesterday,” Mario said. “This is our honey-moon. We’re going to the hills tomorrow.”
“That’s marvellous,” I said. “It’s wonderful. When I’m clean I’d like to kiss the bride.”
“How is Sabby?” Dorcas said.
“Sabby?”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Yes,” I said.
“She’s all right?”
“Oh, rather, yes.”
The receptionist came up and grinned at us.
“There is a small store-room,” he said. “In which we may put a bed.”
“You must come into our room,” Dorcas said. “You’re in an awful state—you can’t look after yourself with that arm.”
“I shall be all right,” I said. “I’ll go into the store-room.”
“He’ll come with us,” she said to the Indian.
“You’re on honeymoon. I’d rather sleep in the store-room.”
“You won’t do anything of the kind,” Mario said. “We’ve got a camp-bed, and one of us can sleep in the bathroom.”
I went upstairs with them and into their room, because I could not argue any more. It was a wide, airy room, and cool under the fan. I sat in the armchair while Dorcas went into the bathroom and changed her evening dress for a silk dressing-gown. Mario began to fix the bed. They were both very capable, and good to look at, and terribly in love. I could see they were in love by the glances they gave each other and the way their hands lingered in contact.
They tried to make me sleep in their own big bed, with its soft mattress and huge white mosquito-net. I had to protest a great deal before they let me have the camp-bed in the bathroom. But I did not want to upset them; and also I wanted to sleep in the bathroom, because I somehow dreaded to go by myself into the voluminous folds of the net, and lie in the wide bed, as I had dreaded the scent of flowers that brought with it pain. It was better to go on being dead inside. I still felt dead and heavy, and I wanted them to hurry up and leave me alone on the bathroom camp-bed.
I did not tell them about Sabby. To tell them I would have to put it into words, and I was afraid of the words. Besides, I didn’t want them to be sad. I wanted them to go on smiling and loving and having their honeymoon. I wanted to have the sadness to myself, and everything else to go on. I was rather jealous of the sadness.
When they had made up the bed I went into the bathroom, and Mario helped me off with my clothes and put on me a pair of his own pyjamas. They were beautiful pyjamas of black silk, expensive and tasteful like all Mario’s things. Then I lay on the bed, and Dorcas came in and sponged my face and washed the filthy hand that was protruding from the plaster. She washed my fingers carefully and in between them, and dried them as carefully with a towel. Mario sat on the edge of the bath and talked cheerfully.
“You look better now,” he said. “When I first caught sight of you I thought you were one of the war-dead risen from the grave.”
“We’re going to see you back into hospital in the morning,” Dorcas said.
She put a sheet over me and tucked it in at the sides, and then Mario brought a small table from the other room and put it at the bedside, with a glass of water on it, and cigarettes and his lighter, because I was unable to strike matches. They stood together in the doorway, closely shoulder to shoulder, Mario dark and suave, and Dorcas with a sunburnt skin, rich against the cascade of fair hair, and her frank, competent English eyes.
“Where did you say you were going tomorrow?” I said.
“We shall see you’re all right first. Then we’re going to Kashmir.”
“It’s lovely in Kashmir in April.”
“We’re looking forward to the mountains.”
“You wait until I’ve made you climb them all,” Mario said.
“You can carry me up if you like. Otherwise I shall sit at the bottom and sip cool drinks. Don’t you think that’s only fair?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “You mustn’t let him bully you.”
When they went they turned off the light and closed the door gently. I heard their soft voices from the next room. There were two dull bumps that were probably Mario’s shoes falling to the floor. Then I thought I could hear the sound of Dorcas brushing her hair. She brushed for a long time, and afterwards she put some things down on the glass surface of the dressing-table. A little later there was the click of a switch, and the only light under the door was the faint orange light of the bedside lamp. Then that was extinguished, too. They went on talking for a time but only occasionally and in voices that were only a murmur through the intervening door.
The bathroom was dark except for the pale bars of moonlight that marked the screened window. I stared up into the blackness. And then out of the deadness within me, gradually, very gradually, a swelling began to emerge, pushing its way upward. Softly at first, and afterwards hugging the pillow to stifle the sound, I began to sob.
THE END
About the Author
Richard Mason
Richard Mason was born near Manchester in 1919. He served in the RAF during the Second World War before taking a crash course in Japanese and becoming an interrogator of prisoners of war. His first novel, The Wind Cannot Read, which drew on these experiences, won the 1948 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde. Several of his following novels were also cinematised, most famously The World of Suzie Wong, about an artist’s romance with a Hong Kong prostitute. His last novel, The Fever Tree, was published in 1962. Mason moved to Rome in the early 1970s and lived there until his death in 1997.
About Bello
Bello
hidden talent rediscovered
Bello is a digital-only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe new life into previously published, classic books.
At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of a good story, narrative and entertainment, and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.
We publish in ebook and print-on-demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.
www.panmacmillan
.com/imprint-publishers/bello
Copyright
First published 1947 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
This edition published 2017 by Bello
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com/imprint-publishers/bello
ISBN 978-1-5098-5242-0 EPUB
ISBN 978-1-5098-5241-3 PB
Copyright © Richard Mason 1947
The right of Richard Mason to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations
and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear
out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively
change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for,
any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Ellipsis, Glasgow
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
The Wind Cannot Read Page 33