Turning Back the Sun(42)

To Rayner the disease was like a warning. It was waiting, as if its victims had been marked out. And he wondered superstitiously about a common factor among them, as though, after all, they had been morally branded. But there was none.

He must be growing imbecile, he thought. This sultriness was turning everybody”s brain. Perhaps his sessions with the analyst were muddling him. Especially in the half-sleep of the nights, fragmented by dreams, his anxieties mushroomed. He dreamed of Ivar. Ever since their schooldays Ivar had been in control of things. Now Rayner had slipped beyond his grasp, and Zo? too—Zo? was perhaps the only woman who had eluded him. Yet even at school there had been a price to pay for not joining Ivar. “Rayner won”t swear the vow! Let”s hunt him. We”ll hunt you, Rayner, if you don”t swear the vow.” The dream pattered with fear. Ivar wanted Zo? back. The Intelligence thundered on his door.

Awake in the dull pessimism of morning, Rayner knew that Ivar might plan a limited retribution. It would be nothing so feeling, so hurt, as revenge—that would be superfluous—just an appropriate measure to show where power lay. If the two natives were discovered here, Ivar might even have him imprisoned for a day or two, calculating to humiliate him before Zo?. In his blacker moments he suspected that only his knowledge of the major”s disease prevented his arrest.

One morning, under the trees by his villa gate, he came upon a litter of cigarette stubs. Somebody must have been standing there, chain-smoking, watching the house hour after hour.

The night before the natives were to leave, he went into the street and began to walk around the compound. Now that cars and passersby were so few, the antiphonal howling of the guard dogs filled the dark, and he could even hear the two-note bark of the desert owls. A single lamp shed an amber pool beside the road. The scrape of his lame foot jarred on the tarmac; then he turned along the barrier of his own fence and trees. They sent up a wall of darkness. He saw no one. A fit man could scale the fence, he knew. He scaled it easily himself. Inside his perimeter, the air was sick with frangipani blossom. But there was nobody. An upper window showed a curtained light, where Zo? had returned. Probably no one had been out for hours, and the natives were sleeping. He felt a foolish absolution. Above his head shone smothered stars.

When he went indoors he found Zo? half undressed before the bedroom mirror. Her cat was reestablished on its cushion in one corner, and her open suitcase spelled forgiveness. She looked at him teasingly. “Where have you been?”

“I was checking to see if anybody was outside.” “Somebody was. He walked off as I arrived.” “That must have been me.”

She burst into laughter. “That”s ridiculous! I know your walk. This was a small man, on the far pavement.”

Rayner did not want to think about it. He kissed her mouth to stop it talking. But their eyes met in a moment of foreboding. He asked, “How was the club tonight?”

Zo? dismissed the menace with her sudden ebullience. “The club? Oh, you”d have loved it. There was nobody there! A few farmers and some bored vigilantes looked in early, but by the time I danced you could”ve heard a mouse yawn. You”d have been thrilled.”

Rayner said testily, “I don”t want the club to collapse.”

“No, not to collapse exactly”—she stepped mockingly up to him—”but just to fold very genteelly, so your girlfriend will be forced into a respectable job.”

“You”d never be forced into anything.” He held her away from him while his gaze travelled over her half-dressed body in a kind of penance. He was reminding himself of her again—a beauty more elusive than the native”s—and concentrating his desire, almost formally, on her whiteness. He drew her against him.

As he kissed her, his fingers spread behind her shoulders and touched an area of faint, upraised roughness. It was familiar from many other bodies.

She felt him start. Her eyes followed his stare. He crushed her against him again, clasping her head to his chest. But she pulled away and stared down.

Out of her left armpit, but stopping short of the breast, crawled a thick crescent of chocolate. Slowly she lifted her arm. It curled beneath it, then broadened to an oval behind, lapping her shoulder blade.

She lowered her arm softly and looked at him. Her lips were tensed back from her teeth. But she only said, “Well, that”s it.”

She was chilled into calm. She did not want to be touched, he could tell. She just wanted to stand there, absorbing the knowledge of it, separate. But he began quaking inside. His voice, almost audible, pleaded in his head: not her. He said, “There”s no evidence it”s dangerous.” But he was saying it more to himself than to Zo?. They had discussed the disease often, as if it were something which only others would contract, and she had heard everything he knew. Somehow he had never imagined it touching her. She was so vibrantly healthy. Even the purity of her skin seemed to deny it. He wondered: how on earth hadn”t she noticed it? He held out his arms to her, but she turned her back. Then, realizing its splash on her shoulder blade, she swung round again and covered her armpit with one hand. She said, “It might be contagious.”

He saw the shame shaking her. The rash confirmed her ugliness in her own eyes. It was a natural eruption from the unsightliness deep in her, the inner blemish she believed in. She was challenging him to touch her.

He said, “Have you felt ill?”