Turning Back the Sun(51)

He felt his own awkwardness. He sipped his schnapps on one side of the room. He had forgotten how people in the city dressed up. The room was a harvest field of coiffured heads, and was filled with their lisping, dreamy accents. People flowed past him like breezes past a crag. They mostly seemed younger than him, but perhaps were not. The women in their low-cut dresses and glacé bows and torques were several of them pretty, and the men full of debonair enthusiasms. He instinctively liked them. But he found nobody to talk with, and did not recognize a soul. They all seemed to partake of the same identity, voluble, optimistic and a little effete.

But after a while people discovered who he was: the nephew who would inherit. They focused him. Two girls came circling round, talking with the vitality of birds. “Oh, you come from that town!” But instead of condescension, he noticed a streak of awe. “That”s where everything”s going on now, isn”t it?” They seemed to envy him. But their knowledge came from half-read newspapers. “Don”t say the summer”s been hotter than here? Fifty-two degrees! …” They panted humorously. “Disease? No, we”ve never heard of any disease. You mean nobody”s got a cure?” They looked bewildered, “The desert must be fascinating…. But fourteen murders? So the savages might just walk up and stick an axe in you? We used to have native servants and they were absolutely loyal …”

Sometimes, imprisoned in his head, he heard Zo?”s ribald laughter.

Yet beneath their patter flared an intolerance which appealed to him. Out of their security—the city”s isolation and peace—they were furious with injustice, dismayed at inhumanity, sometimes incredulous. He felt as if he”d returned from a battlefront rather than just another town. “Torture?” demanded one man. “You mean our people do it? They kill them just like that?”

But they seemed to be hung with veils. They could not really comprehend. Away from the hot, fierce streets of the town, from its frightened inhabitants, its searing wilderness, understanding was impossible. Uneasily Rayner felt that compared to these people he was contaminated, and that, by comprehending even a little the paranoia and torture, he came closer to forgiving it. He was even afraid that this might show in his too-easy conversation, in the smoothness with which he sipped his schnapps while talking about death. In a moment, he thought, the indignant man and the two outraged girls—still uncomprehending—might look at him afresh, and turn away.

And from time to time, behind his eyes, Zo? emerged in a soft, disruptive mockery. Once—so vivid was her image—he even thought she said something; but he could not catch her words.

Then he saw Leon. He was leaning against a cabinet with a glass of wine at his lips. He looked unchanged. The slight plumping-out of his face had dispossessed it of any lines.

Leon caught sight of him at the same moment. “Rayner!”

They embraced, then stared into each other”s eyes, reassembling one another. Leon asked, joking, “Where have you been? Not in that terrible place all this time?”

Rayner was transfixed by Leon”s sameness. After his suffering, it was baffling. He raked his hands melodramatically down his own face. “Yes, fifteen years! And you see what it”s done to me!”

Leon gazed at him with something between admiration and recoil. “I”d have killed myself,” he said. “I read that the drought had set the savages marauding.”

“They”re marauding through people”s heads.”

“I heard there”d been fourteen deaths.”

“Yes. I fished two out of the river.”

Leon shielded his eyes. “How could you stand it?”

“You have to.”

“Well, I suppose you”re a doctor, and used to it.” Rayner noticed his lips trembling. His gaze was fixed on the rim of his wine glass. Leon said, “It”s so long ago since you left. How do we catch up?” But perhaps he did not want to, because he went on, “Those were magic times, weren”t they? Do you remember the masked ball at Adelina”s? Do you remember …?”

Then, unprompted, he launched down a long, mournful river of reminiscence. He recalled picnics, balls and bathing parties, teenage jokes and childish vendettas, abortive loves, clandestine boating expeditions, accidents, all in a tapestry of detail. Rayner could not remember half of them. But to Leon the act of remembering had attained a terrible, all-absorbing meaning. His anecdotes followed one another in a maudlin rush, and the old, fastidious intelligence which Rayner remembered was powerless against it.

At last Rayner intervened, “You remember twice as much as I do!”

The room had started to empty. The remaining guests stood islanded among the scattered hors d”oeuvres and emptied glasses.

“But it”s all somewhere inside you, isn”t it? I promise you.” Leon touched his shoulder in confidence, and looked momentarily ashamed as he murmured, “Have you heard about these psychiatrists? There are lots of them in the city now. Do you know about them? They help you remember your infancy.” He looked bereft. “It”s a kind of healing. Just to remember.”

“Has it been?” Rayner felt a desolate pity for him.

Leon balanced his wine glass on the cabinet. He was a little drunk. “Not yet.” Then he took Rayner”s arm with pathetic urgency. “You will be staying in the city now, won”t you? We”ve got everything here.” His grip relaxed. “Too many of the others have gone. Gerhard, Ivar …”