Turning Back the Sun

by Colin Thubron

  Ivar was saying, “I thought they”d have wanted you in town now.”

  “You mean the disease?” Rayner shook his head. “We can”t treat it. We can pretend, of course, we always do. But basically we don”t know anything.”

  Ivar said levelly, “You”ll be able to track it down in the end. How many cases are reported now? Eleven?”

  “We”d be able to trace it better if we knew what it was. But we”ve taken blood and urine tests and come up with nothing at all. We”ve even X-rayed for cancer, but … nothing.”

  “You think it”s infectious?”

  “I don”t know. Nothing”s shown up in the blood.”

  He said, “Well then, the people who”ve caught it can be monitored. There must be some common factor.”

  “They”re all sorts. Both sexes, old, young. Two are miners, one”s an optician. A bank clerk …” The school medical officer—Rayner”s amateur analyst—had even reported the rash on a child of six.

  Ivar said, “How strange,” but he said it reluctantly, acknowledging only a temporary barrier which would soon be cleared away. That was typical, Rayner thought. Ivar had always spread this calm of logic and reasonableness about him, which left no place for the unknown. Now he added, “People say it”s a savage”s disease—even that they”re spreading it on purpose.”

  “There”s no evidence for that!” It was maddening, Rayner thought, how Ivar could voice a piece of pure speculation, and in his measured tone the idea would take on sanity. Whereas Rayner, when he refuted it, sounded harshly precarious.

  Ivar said, “I”d have thought it permissible, under the circumstances, to take in a few of the local savages for medical inspection.”

  “It”d be harder to diagnose in natives than in anybody.” Rayner remembered the blotched torso of the old man at the holy site. “I think they generally suffer the opposite complaint. Skin depigmentation. And apart from discoloration the only symptoms are vague. Just a general malaise. And some patients complain of aching eyeballs.”

  “Did you know,” Ivar said, “that during the last savage troubles fourteen years ago they systematically poisoned the town”s water supply?”

  “I never heard that.”

  “Well, they did—”

  Felicie broke in, “Ivar thinks the savages are “racially inferior.” “ Her head wobbled like a flower. “Do you?”

  Rayner laughed (it seemed the only thing to do). “Genetics isn”t my subject.” But when he thought about the natives, he felt a confused disquiet. Between them and the whites there seemed to lie some absolute divide, as if they inhabited another stratum of time. He said, “I suppose they”re inferior when they”ve had to adapt to our way. We”d be, if we had to adapt to theirs.”

  He did not want to talk about it. Through a window behind Ivar”s back he saw that the moon had risen out of the hills. He wrenched himself to his feet and walked out onto the terrace. The wine had gone to his head. In front of him only the lake and the moon seemed to exist in the simplifying night. He even fancied that this was where the moon came from, out of the lake. He was reminded of the seacoast near the capital on other summer nights, of Miriam, of phosphorus water in the rock pools. The restaurants in the capital, he thought, did not have to strain for effect as this one did, with its pretentious chandeliers and fake leather upholstery.

  Ivar had followed him out. “Felicie wasn”t joking,” he said. “I do think that. These people are radically different. You only have to look at the shape of their heads to see it. There simply isn”t enough room for a developed neocortex.”

  Rayner chilled. Ivar, he”d noticed, was reading a manual called Leadership Effectiveness. He seemed to be mentally arming himself. To Ivar, knowledge must always have a purpose—Rayner remembered this from their schooldays. Everything was used, directed to an end. Nothing existed simply for itself.

  Rayner said, “It”s not as simple as that.”

  Ivar answered quite affectionately, “You always did complicate things.” He dropped his cigarette stub over the verandah. “But just look at Felicie”s head shape, for example. That”s the brain case of a sheep.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Not in the least.” But he laughed. “This is the last holiday she and I take together. She”s an exceptionally pretty woman, don”t you think, but there”s too much I dislike in her, and I”ve no doubt she”d say the same about me.”

  “There”s something desperate about her.”

  “I”ll keep an eye on her after we”ve split up.”

  Rayner watched Ivar”s face in the moonlight: the putty-like face in which nothing was memorable, except the bland balance of the whole. Yes, Ivar would keep an eye on Felicie. Rayner”s childhood memories of him were all of a premature adult, mocking a little, but kindly within limits: a man to whom cruelty would be a waste of energy.

  He went on gazing at the moonstruck lake. His head was clearing, but not happily. If he had not known Ivar in childhood, he thought, they could never have become friends. Yet sometimes he felt irritated at his own inability to embrace life as Ivar did. Everything seemed to grate on him harder than on others—on these robust townspeople drinking and dancing behind him, their exile forgotten. Ivar and the town were right for one another, he thought. They were all ruled by a merciless common sense: whether in accepting a theory about the savages” inferiority (one of God”s slips, they would say) or the lot of the pathetic Felicie.

  “Zoë will help her,” Rayner said. “I think she relies on Zoë.”

  “Yes, she probably does.” Ivar turned quiet. “But you can”t rely on Zoë except in bursts.” He took Rayner”s arm, asserting their old friendship, its primacy over any later ones. “I”ve known Zoë several years, and she”s very self-willed, complex…. She”s a solitary.”

  Perhaps Ivar was warning him against falling in love. But in some way, Rayner thought, Zoë had offended him.

  “Don”t misunderstand me,” he went on. “She”s good looking, she”s intelligent…. On a six-day holiday she”ll be fine.” He gave a collusive laugh. “But then, she”s never the same …”

  It was the first time Rayner had seen this look on Ivar”s face: perplexity. So he had failed to understand her.

  Then Rayner felt a sudden distaste at them both standing here, talking about their temporary women. He did not want to discuss Zoë any longer. But he could not resist asking, “How the hell did she land up in this town?”

  “She”s always gone her own way. Her parents are decent people in the north, you know. Teachers. But she had to be different …”

  Zoë and Felicie came out onto the terrace then, exclaiming at the moonlight and the men”s absence. They had twined jasmine in each other”s hair. Their laughter tinkled in the night. Anyone boating on the lake, Rayner thought, would have seen two glamorous young women carelessly on holiday with their men …

  Behind them the band had struck up one of the syncopated dance tunes popular that year. In front, an isolated wind was interfering with the moonlight all over the lake. Felicie was walking unsteadily up and down the terrace, crooning to herself. Zoë, standing close to Rayner, had started listening for owls, and he was conscious of her hands resting beside him on the verandah stonework, their long fingers interlaced. Ivar came and stood beside them, his jacket hung carelessly over his arm.

  Then Ivar reached out and covered Zoë”s hands with one of his. It was a broad hand, Rayner saw. A gold ring glinted on it. Ivar said, “Come and dance.”

  There was something so assured, so proprietorial about the gesture, that Zoë”s reaction was the more shocking. Her hands darted from under his and bunched whitely at her waist. For a split second an abyss of vulnerability opened up in her. Then her anger covered her. For an instant Rayner saw her eyes flash down at his crippled foot, the one which could not dance, then up again at Ivar. Her hands were behind her back. She breathed, “No!”

  Because he scarcely knew her, her character splintered with awesome complexity bef
ore his eyes. Every night she would wipe away with cold cream the elaborate evening face she had composed, and there would appear beneath it her other, softer persona. With her hair loosed behind her back like a young girl”s, her features appeared thinner, peakier. Even the luster in her eyes seemed to change. It calmed to a tentative stare. Her whole demeanor seemed to be asking: am I all right?

  This changed person awoke Rayner”s protectiveness. It was as if this capacity in him—a kind of impassioned tenderness—had been there long ago, waiting for her. At night the slender dancer”s arms with their elongated fingers twined about him in blind urgency, so that he wanted to calm her into himself. Yet whenever he started to think that this orphan was her only manifestation, its mirror image would erupt—vital, playful, defiant—and she would revert to her daytime self: the owner of the proud back and strong-shaped legs. Then she would tease and laugh at him and at herself, like somebody watching a carnival.

  He sensed that she carried with her a past as disjoined as his own. At first, because she didn”t refer to it, he thought her secretive. Then he realized that she just wanted to forget: she despised self-pity. For years after leaving the capital she had lived hand-to-mouth, performing in theater and cabaret. She had started to drink too much; and yes, there had been many men.

  She spoke without regret. She wanted him to know. After leaving dance academy, she said, she might have entered the state ballet company. But she”d fallen in love with jazz and flamenco, and joined a mime theater instead. “Everybody said I was mad, because we were openly political. Our director behaved as if the country was as free as it pretended to be, and we did shows about every state farce and corruption.” She laughed ruefully. “But we were just children, of course, trying to make the world all right.”

  Rayner wondered in astonishment how this little theater had survived in the twenties, when censorship in the capital had been as harsh as during the war. But within a year, she said, they were all being persecuted. She had been living with one of the actors and become pregnant, when they were denounced to the authorities. She was warned that unmarried motherhood was an abuse to the state. Her parents refused to see her again unless she agreed to an abortion.

  “But I could feel the baby already alive in me.” Her voice emptied of any tone, as if against weeping. At eight months she had given birth to a stillborn boy, and for an instant had held him in her hands, and seen his expression.

  She detached Rayner”s arms from her, as if they could not comfort. After a while, with sudden, bitter humor, she said: “In the puritan crackdown I got reassigned to other work. Dancers like me were listed Grade Seven, along with prostitutes and gypsies. I was told to start clerical training.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I said I”d rather lose my residence permit than stop dancing. So I was reassigned here.” She added grimly, brutalizing herself. “Basically, I was chucked out.”

  Her honesty, especially when turned on herself, sounded almost callous. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He did not understand this obscure battle to dance.

  But four years ago, she said, for no reason she knew, her suffering—this shadow-boxing with herself and with authority—had eased. She had stopped drinking. She had started living alone, and had adopted the discipline of yoga. Once she tried to explain this to him, but only ended in confusion. “We”re getting into deep water!”

  But every afternoon by the lake she would disappear for an hour. The shoreline was littered with flat, seal-grey rocks belted with the marks of seasonal evaporation, and on one of these she would settle, facing the sun. Then her prayer-like stretchings and bendings would begin, the private suppleness which would bring her feet close against her breast or arch them behind her back. She doubled and twisted, did headstands and shoulder-stands or balanced with one leg behind her neck, all in a rhythmic, concentrated calm.

  Meanwhile he swam or lay reading, and watched the wind chafe or polish the lake surface, while often the far shore stood invisible in haze, as if this were indeed the ocean of their childhood memory. But in fact its water rested tideless against the rocks, and its mood and beauty were beginning to depend on her. Her sudden fervors and withdrawals were starting to obsess him. In conversation she poured questions over him—straightforward but demanding ones about anything she didn”t know—with that disturbing innocence of hers. She would listen to him with an almost anguished attention, which would then fade for no reason he could guess, and suddenly return.

  Even in bed she often clasped him with an impassioned, hurt need, as if she had nothing else in the world, and when she stared at him he felt her pulling out love through his eyes, scouring his skull clean. So he made love to her in a euphoria of longing, tinged with sorrow. Yet at other times, as if from years of wounding, she would show only a detached affection; then she seemed to be holding back some vital part of her, and proving to herself, with a raw sadness, that she was, after all, separate. Once, sensing this, he asked, “Do you want me to go to sleep?”—and she nodded, filling him with a pang of intense, hopeless separation.

  Now in the morning, when he lay idle on the lake”s verge, the offshore islands seemed to rage or go melancholy, depending on the night before. In some way, he realized, he had fallen in love with her.

  But just as she incarnated two different women, so she demanded two men of him. The man who intrigued her with conversation during the day—”my pet brain”—was not allowed to possess her at night. For this she turned him into someone else. For a while her gaze would drain him and her body would cling, as if they might complete one another. Then she would say, “Don”t talk. Just love me,” and close her eyes. She wanted him both as lover and friend, but the two could not, in the end, overlap. The man who entered her had to be a stranger.

  Once, watching her writhe in his arms as if in some private trance, he said bemusedly, “I might as well be a stud.”

  Her eyes opened in distress. “No … no. It”s not important.”

  “What isn”t?”

  “Sex.” She looked shy, as if she had just focused him. “I”ve never really wanted sex.”

  He drew back from her, astonished. He”d believed her more erotic than him. She”d had affairs since she was sixteen.

  She said, “I”ve only wanted male companionship, in the end. That”s why I went wild as a girl. I just wanted to be held.”

  She shot him a depleted smile. Suddenly, staring down at her, he imagined all the men in whose carnal energies she had looked for love—including, perhaps, his own—and felt sick with pity.

  But she saw his expression and started to laugh. “Don”t look like that. Christ! I was using them too. I wasn”t so badly treated, except by Ivar.”

  “I wanted to ask about that.”

  So they sat up against the pillows in one another”s arms, and talked about Ivar. She tilted her head a little away, as if freeing herself to judge or remember, but her words came in bursts of self-contempt.

  “I should have known it”d be no good. He and his army friends had been picking girls up at the club for nearly a year, and I thought I had his measure.” She still sounded angry. “Then, out of nowhere, I fell in love with him. It”s the only time it”s happened to me like that. He”d been trying to get me for months, and one morning I just woke up knowing, “I love him.” “ She gave a disdainful laugh. “But it wasn”t for long. Three months, I think.”

  Rayner thought he could guess Ivar”s allure for women: the malleable face, quite sensual in its softness, which could deploy expressions by remote control and was, in its way, perfectly sincere.

  Zoë said, “But he”s cold at heart, Ivar. Dead. He doesn”t want a woman, he wants a servant. There”s something in him … something … not there at all. So he humiliates you. You go mad for him and he stays utterly sane.”

  “Why were you so hurt?”

  She said, “Just that he didn”t care.” Her look of depletion returned. Her fingers kneaded his. “He treated love as a ki
nd of … eccentricity. Women don”t really exist for him, you know. Not as people. He thinks he likes intelligent women, but he doesn”t. He doesn”t like stupid ones either. Poor Felicie.”

  Rayner felt a stab of jealousy. He turned and lifted Zoë against him. Her body had turned cool with the night.

  “I don”t want to feel that ever again,” she said, as if guessing his sadness. “You”re better than he is.”

  She closed her mouth over his to stop it talking, and for long minutes Rayner gave up thinking as he moved with the rhythm of the soft, schizophrenic body under his. Only later, as she clung to him with what might have been gratitude, and sighed a little, did he remember the man he couldn”t be for her, and his jealousy returned. In exchange for her deep, helpless commitment, he knew, he would have given up all that he elicited in respect and affection. Like Ivar, he thought uneasily, he wanted to own her.

  The weather held until their last day. Then the haze which had lain all week over the lake bloomed malignantly to suffocate the sky, and the sun disappeared. It felt like the stifling prelude to a storm—which never came. Without the sun, time vanished. Rayner swam with closed eyes where the shore steepened under canopies of trees. His slow breaststrokes parted a flotsam of rotted coconut husks and palm leaves. He thought about Ivar: how most people must seem mad to him. Zoë had simmered under his calm for a while, then surfaced to baffle him, baffle herself. He could not imagine them together.

  He shuddered as something brushed under his feet: something soft. But gazing down through the peat-colored water, he saw only a decayed silkwood trunk. His nerves were frayed, he thought. One week”s holiday was too little. He swam to one of the island rocks which looked smooth but was rough and cutting, and heaved himself up.