Turning Back the Sun(33)

“I”m having to regulate the man”s tablets,” Rayner said. “He doesn”t even remember to take them.”

“The savages are used to their own medicines.” Again Leszek seemed to be saying: They are not like us. Leave them alone.

Rayner said, “I don”t want that old man”s death on my hands.” But he knew, as he said it, that he was hoping Leszek would somehow absolve him from protecting the natives any longer. Like Leszek, he was growing deeply apprehensive.

“The trouble is …” Leszek nervously adjusted his spectacles. “There”s more than just the savages to consider. You must have noticed … you surely have. The whole clinic has become affected. Half the town knows. Only yesterday I was about to administer an injection when the patient asked, “Is that needle clean?” and I knew what she was thinking. Nobody ever used to ask that.”

It was true, Rayner thought, the patients who used to be so docile were suddenly questioning the sterilization of needles and even of dressings. Only that morning a miner submitting to a blood test for lead poisoning had demanded to see the needle sterilized before his eyes.

“It”s so much a matter of faith,” Leszek said. “If people lose faith in us … if they start shying away from us … we”ll kill people that way.”

Rayner felt a dulled, stubborn resistance to this. Leszek was simply afraid. “It”s ridiculous.”

Leszek said bitterly, “People are ridiculous.” He took off his spectacles as if to obliterate his fellow men. “But you can understand it. There”ve been seven whites killed here in as many weeks. What are they to feel?”

“I know.” The memory of those axed-in heads surfaced again. “But the natives all come from different clans. This old man has no connection with the groups upriver.”

“I dare say not.” Leszek turned starchy and defensive. Perhaps he felt he was being accused of cowardice, or was accusing himself. “But it”s only a matter of time before the military takes the last of the savages in. And then what happens to them?” There was a tinge of reedy triumph in his voice. “Yes, what then? It”s better you tell them to go, before it”s too late.”

That night Rayner was woken by confused shouts and cries. They sounded far away but violent, as if left over from nightmare, yet when he fully woke they were still there. He pulled back the curtain from a three-quarter moon. Beyond and a little below him, like a ghost over the blanched river, moved an unlit police launch. All along the near bank, where the last natives had camped, the darkness spurted lights and the screams and bawling reached him with unearthly distinctness. A cooking fire showered the night with sparks before dying underfoot. A child was shrieking. But in that distance everything passed with a chill unnaturalness. Gradually the lights shifted downriver toward the road. Occasionally, in the flash of torches, Rayner discerned a jostle of heads as someone still resisted arrest. Then, one by one, the jeeps” headlights flooded the distant highway as they drove away, and the police launch drifted back into dimness. For a moment the loudest sound was his own breathing, short and harsh in the room”s silence.

Then, with an eerie shock of familiarity, as if it resonated somewhere in his memory (but he could not recall where), there arose from near the river a long, disembodied howling, which wavered like a dog”s under the moon, and died away.

By the time Rayner had tugged on his trousers and gone outside, everything was silent again. He blundered along the crest of the slope, afraid of treading on a snake with his bare feet. He had forgotten to bring a torch, but by the time he reached the copse his eyes had adjusted to the moonlight. For the first time since their arrival he was praying that the natives would still be there. He thrust aside the branches until he reached the bloodwood trees.

They lay asleep on their quilt. The girl bunched on her side, her head covered by her arms. The old man”s face was turned up to the sky. Yet he appeared not really to sleep. The converging lines which knit together his eyes and nose twitched and flinched at the air. And the big, dry mouth was never still. It uttered tiny cries. And he breathed so lightly. Rayner stared down at him with relief and something like affection. But in its enormous nest of hair the old man”s face looked emptied, Rayner thought, as if he were the detritus of some older, sturdier race, which had lost its evolutionary way. And the cries he uttered were like the fragments of a language he had once known, and was trying in vain to recover.





CHAPTER

15

How long the staff car had been waiting outside the clinic Rayner could not guess. The corporal had covered its dashboard with a blanket against the sun and fallen asleep inside. As they drove into the barracks he said, “It was the captain wanted you,” and he pulled up outside the military police jail.

Ivar met Rayner in the warder”s room. He was wearing a look of complicitous charm, and took Rayner”s arm as if to lead him aside—but there was nowhere aside to go. There had been an unfortunate occurrence, he said. One of their prisoners—an elderly savage—had died of heart failure. The surgeon had carried out a postmortem, but they needed a second signature on the Notification of Death form. It was routine, of course. He pushed the form across the desk until it lay under Rayner”s eyes, then began to talk of other things. His relationship with Felicie was unexpectedly better, he said. And how was Zo?? Yes, she was certainly characterful. In fact you never knew which of her characters she was going to adopt next. This did make her … well … difficult …