The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest Read online

  Her voice was dry and controlled. The scholar, when cholera ravishes his children, retreats to the dust of the library.

  “Well, I’ll talk to Rebecca, then,” said Pibble. “The other thing I wanted to consult you about is more complicated. It seems to me probable that whatever motive there was for murdering Aaron was connected with the revival of this drumming ritual. Everyone who knew him agrees that he would have wanted to stop it, and I think it’s possible that one of the steps he would have taken to try and stop it might have been so inconvenient to somebody that they decided to kill him. It also seems that he was thinking, and had been for some time, of trying to persuade you to move the tribe back to New Guinea, and that this was somehow bound in with the process of stopping the drumming. Does any of this make sense to you?”

  “I’ve been talking to Paul,” said Eve. “I only just missed you when you left. You will have discovered by now that we are all—to some degree, at any rate—obsessed with my father. I had not realized how much the others were before; it is, of course, natural for me. Aaron, Paul thinks, was more obsessed than any of us. He was a difficult man to explain to a European, though not an uncommon type among peoples with a pre-urban mode of thought. He was both intelligent and simple. If I said that he held his beliefs with the intensity of a peasant, I would be putting a wrong image into your mind, but you must think of something of that order; think of those dingy, relic-crammed chapels in the parched south, where the hills are steep and barren and the richer soil in the narrow valleys is owned by hundreds of cousins in hundreds of tiny parcels. The peasants there have something of Aaron’s kind of faith, believing with passion in the virtues of their own chapel’s precious fragment of the veil of Saint Chrysostoma. But Aaron’s relic was my father; he had talked with him, learned from him, knew his virtues as real in the real world, and not just erratic emanations from a capricious heaven. We think, Paul and I, that he must have felt that the soil of the valley where my father had walked had a special virtue; that that was where Daddy had chosen to do his life’s work, and that it had been a sort of sacrilege to abandon the shrine (though, in fact, we did so at Aaron’s bidding). If I am right, he would have applied his considerable intelligence to possible means of moving the tribe back. He would have looked for a little advantage here and another little advantage there. It was at his wish that we originally got an estate agent to have the Terrace valued, for instance.”

  “What would the obstacles have been?” asked Pibble. “I imagine Paul’s work would have been a major one.”

  “Curiously, no,” said Eve. “Or at least I don’t think so. I don’t think he ever realized the quality of Paul’s work. The picture of the Crucifixion was just a picture of a holy subject to him; a cheap print might have met his needs just as well. Paul’s picture has a particularly startling meaning to us, of course, but Aaron would have been satisfied with a much cruder drawing which bore the same interpretation. The position of the artist in a primitive community is a very different thing from his position in a civilized city, Superintendent. In some ways, the village artist is much happier; art, to us, is an ordinary part of the ritual of living, and the man who is painting a picture, or practicing a gymnastic dance, is in our eyes doing an ordinary job of work, just as much as the man who is snaring lizards or thatching a hut; his place in the community is accepted, normal, and he can just get on with his job. This is a much healthier state of affairs than prevails in Western civilization. On the other hand, the position of the artist who happens to be an outstanding­ practitioner­ is much less fortunate; innovation is difficult and constricted­ in the framework of a ritual tradition; the opportunities­ for cross-fertilization­ between cultures are rare; the audience is receptive and uncritical, quick to appreciate nuances inside the tradition but baffled by anything outside it. I believe that Paul is an exceptional artist, but I do not think Aaron had even thought about the idea. He was amused that Londoners should pay so highly for our tribal art, but he would have expected Paul to be just as happy and fulfilled back in the valley decorating the doors of huts.”

  “I see,” said Pibble. “Then what other boulders would he have tried to shift?”

  Eve glanced sideways toward where Mrs. Caine was sitting, not seeming to listen at all, nibbling at a bitten-to-the-quick little-finger nail.

  “There was that other thing I talked to you about in our house. Aaron was certainly obsessed with the idea that I gave greater attention to the matter than I should. I think he might well have decided to try and find a method of convincing me that the relationship involved was deleterious. I have been thinking, while I was out walking, about your conjuring trick this morning which so impressed us all, and it does seem to me possible that Aaron was going to try and use his evidence (if evidence it was) to detach me from that particular reason for staying. It would have been pointless, but he could not have known that.”

  Just like doing an easy crossword puzzle. The relationship was with Caine, the evidence was the penny, the conjuring trick was tossing it. What the hell did Mrs. Caine make of it all, if she was listening?

  “Because he couldn’t understand about Paul?” he said.

  “When we were still on the island,” said Eve, “he came to tell me one day about his plans for the future of the tribe, because they affected me. He was always secretive, but very honorable, too; he would not have thought it right to involve me in one of his schemes without my knowledge. Then I discovered that he had really no conception of the nature of my relationship with Paul …”

  VIII

  I am an addict, thought Eve. I am addicted to Paul. So young, so young, so young, under the razzle-dazzle leaves. I’ll take us all to London and buy a proper bed, a brass one with knobs you can unscrew and leave messages in. The inside of the rims of his eyelids are red; as red as … as … as a rose. Paul scarlet. My love is like a black, black rose. You can shut your eyes and feel the color of his skin, through your fingertips and the palms of your hands, black as … as … Oh hell! Like suède, sort of; but not, sort of. . .velvety. It’s the extra cutaneous layers they have because of the sun. Bet you white men feel like the inside of sponge bags; can’t imagine being addicted to the inside of a sponge bag. Never know now. Have to deduce all men from Paul, being all things to all men, all men to all things. Daddy said you mustn’t argue about God as if there were more than one. I believe in one God, to Whom statistics therefore do not apply. Thus, therefore, it follows … it follows … it follows … it—only one Paul in my universe, no other portent in my small sky. Or is it only a pash? Could it be for anyone, for Humphrey Bogart or a history mistress or the Duke of Windsor? His breath smells of cinnamon. Oh Christ, what can I do with them all? Why should it have to be me? I want to go away and live alone with Paul, alone in a civilized country where you can buy brass bedsteads. And what do you propose to do to earn your bread, Miss Mackenzie? Man cannot live by bed alone, still less two men. And Bob, please God, will go back to Australia and we’ll never hear or see or think about him again, except to send him a telegram when he gets his D.S.O. Poor Bob.

  Six months now—a pash couldn’t last six months, surely. If you’re under a strain and all your friends are being killed and there isn’t enough to eat, then you might fall into the nearest man’s arms just because he was handy, but we stuck all that time out. And we stuck out three feasts, too—not like feasts in the village, but even so—hope Mummy and Daddy enjoyed themselves after the feasts in the village; I wonder what Mummy made of it all. Four feasts, if you count the first moon feast we weren’t allowed to go to, and they didn’t even turn a hair because they were so pleased to have a couple of sentries; wonder if Aaron had thought of that, too, the wily old ape. They’ve got subtle minds, only they don’t use them the same way. Sometimes I know what he’s thinking now; I know when he’s happy. Funny, three nights of drink and shouting and dancing and we didn’t even hold hands, and then we stumbled against each other on the path up to
the lizard traps and both said yes together. Soggy, that’s what I am, soggy with love. If I take him—them all—to London, he’ll have to have something to do which he’s happy doing, not for money but just for his mind to grind on; otherwise it’ll grow round and round into itself like a rabbit’s teeth and bury itself in his own skull. What can you do with patterns? Fabrics and wallpapers and things, I suppose—there must be technical schools which teach people. And I’ll write a book about Daddy, except that I don’t know enough about it all, but they must teach that, too; they must teach everything. Now we move on in our next lecture to a curious and rather repellent aspect of the Thames Valley Culture, the ritual segregation of females of the higher castes at puberty into establishments known as Colleges, where they lived for five years and worshiped the minor deity called Pash. He knows what I’m thinking, too. He’s a saint. His skin tastes bitter, like burned herbs. If we could go away and live together, we could have children and not be ruled by this miserable rhythm. It’s always been the men poets who made such a fuss about the moon. I must ask Aaron whether a hunting Ku has ever had a baby—there might be something in the myths, and then life would be simpler. He’s ambitious, that’s the word, not like the other Kus; he wants to do whatever he does as well as it can be done, not just as well as it’s always been done. There’s no scope for him here, in this tiny crumb of a tribe. Edinburgh. If there’s enough money. How rich was Mummy? I wonder if he’ll get fat when he’s old, as fat as the old men. It depends how I feed him, or perhaps it’s hereditary—I must keep notes. And in London we’ll be able to feed Becca properly, though it’s too late, surely. He walks like a clever toy. It’s the way they put their feet down which makes them move so quietly. I’ll get him to draw me pictures of a Ku walking and pictures of Bob walking and see if he can see the difference. Lucky Bob gets incapable so early at the feasts—wonder if he’s worked it out yet about me and Paul; bet he has. Bob’s not really stupid—that’s the wrong word—hell to teach, a scowling lump at the back of the class, but cunning about people—bet Bob knew before Aaron, if Aaron knows now. Funny, Aaron’s clever—scholarship class, given the chance—but simple about people; he can count their leaves and their sepals but he cannot feel how their roots writhe between the crumbs of soil. Paul can. If I tried to write him down, it’d come out all wrong, a noble savage, a tender orangutan, a super collection of scooped muscles and tingling skin, a love animal—all wrong. I never looked at Bob properly till Paul drew him in the dust. Poor Bob.

  If Paul agrees about going to Edinburgh, or even London, we’ll have to talk to Aaron. It really would be for everyone’s good, it really would; get away from all this and forget about the miseries and find a nice, big house in the Wynds where we can start all over again. When Paul gets back from the coast—please, God, keep him out of trouble. Please. Please—they killed Pastor Bollern, too, and all his people; we weren’t the only ones. Five days to the river, say, and three days on makes eight and two to find out and eight back—why doesn’t it ever come out different?—eighteen. Eleven, he’s been gone, eleven, eleven … Buck up, Mackenzie! When Paul—

  “Miss Mackenzie.”

  She rolled onto her back and sat up. Aaron stood black and squat amid the bower of creepers which they had found not far from the trail to the lizard traps.

  “Is Paul back?” she said.

  “Soon, perhaps. He need not go all the way to the coast, I think. Elijah found one of the Amalotoluto fishing down in our marshes, who said that the Japanese are gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone from all the island. If this be true, Miss Mackenzie, what must we do next?”

  “Oh Lord, Aaron, I don’t know. I’ll have to go to England, I suppose, and find out what’s happened to everything, and I’d like Paul to come, too.”

  “We must all come. We must go far from here and learn to be a new people in a Christian land.”

  “But what’ll you all do? The men can’t go out hunting all day—there’s nothing except fields and houses. If you found a new valley here—”

  “A new valley here would be as the old valley, Miss Mackenzie. We are too few and the Reverend Mackenzie is dead. Soon we would be lost, dried up as a puddle is dried by the sun. We must go to a different place, where we have nothing but ourselves. There our loneliness will hold us together. Paul must join the men’s hut once more and wed with Rebecca, and you must wed a man of your own people.”

  “Sikataro kani takarato Paul ni plarai pikaru ni kala tai!”

  Aaron grunted and stared at her, clawing deeply at the side of his beard. When they got to Edinburgh, Paul would have to start shaving; that’d help to set the two of them really apart from the rest. Aaron grunted again and wheeled away, like a pachyderm confronted by a motorcar. Eve realized what had happened; he had thought his campaign out in detail, right down to the subjunctives in the sentences, and now the whole scheme had come to pieces over a minor tactical defeat. He’d go away and piece together another scheme which allowed for her aberrations. She wondered what his mental picture of England was like—Mummy had often talked to him about it, making extra coaching in English­ an excuse for dreamy nostalgia—and anyway the war would’ve made everything quite, quite different. She rolled over onto her stomach again, but could not recover the dozy, sensual wash, half thought, half dreamed, which had kept her happy before Aaron came. Instead she watched two ugly, clumsy beetles, impeded by their own ill-fitting wing sheaths, blundering through the process of mating as though nobody had ever thought of it before.

  IX

  I’m sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes—in the same way I think he had no conception of Paul’s relation with his work. He would have considered it perfectly natural for him to return to New Guinea and use his talent decorating the doors of a few huts.”

  “Didn’t he talk to you about any of this, Mrs. Caine?” said Pibble.

  She abandoned her tortured nail, like an old lady laying her crochet work down in her lap to cope with the importunities of a great-nephew.

  “Aaron?” she said, with a curious squeaky giggle that he hadn’t heard before; it seemed strangely out of context. “He was always talking about going back to New Guinea, but I never thought it was more than a daydream.”

  “He didn’t talk about it any differently last night?”

  “Not that I noticed, but honestly I’d slightly given up listening. I enjoyed having him here, but I’d heard it all before, about the pig hunts and the hut building and the dances and feasts and drums—”

  “Drums!” said Eve sharply.

  “Yes, and having the whole valley full of jungle round them and it all being theirs for miles and miles and miles. He used to talk about the children growing up with that as the world they knew, instead of all these bricks.”

  “But he didn’t say anything new last night?” said Pibble.

  “I didn’t hear anything. It was like having a record player on playing Beethoven, but you don’t pay any attention to it because you’re doing a crossword or worrying about money or something. It’s not right, and you know it, just treating all that marvelous stuff as a cozy noise, but you do it because you feel like it.”

  She laughed her proper pigeon laugh this time.

  “Are you sure that he talked about drums as if they were something he liked?” said Eve.

  “Yes, I think so. No. Wait a bit—it’s all my fault for not listening properly—he might have said that somebody else had them and he didn’t like them. Was there another tribe anywhere near? Anyway, I don’t think he talked about them at all last night.”

  “Never mind,” said Eve. “I expect you’ve muddled up different things. Until you are used to them, it can be very difficult to judge whether they approve or disapprove of anything—to judge from their tone, that is. Some Europeans find them embarrassingly explicit verbalizers, especially the women. He must have felt very relaxed and at home with you to talk ab
out the drums at all.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Caine. “I didn’t realize.”

  The conversation puttered about for a bit, without ever regaining the ease and confidence it had possessed earlier on. They were all three bored, Pibble realized, and both the women looked drawn and tired. He thanked Mrs. Caine for his tea and left to interview the old men.

  It took two hours and turned out to be almost entirely wasted time. They all said exactly the same things; they outlasted his nerve-racking silences with contemptuous ease; they remained aloof from his treacherous friendliness and impervious to his factitious aggression; every question was considered, then answered with the stately formality of minor characters in a tragedy by Racine.

  Joshua was the most interesting; he was the cook whom Pibble had nicknamed The Poacher, and his style of conversation was different from the others. Perhaps his vocabulary was smaller, but he relied less on words than on an elaborate and expressive code of gestures. He sat on the bed of the pretty little room which Pibble had collared for his inquisition, a blob of black flesh, perched like Tenniel’s Humpty Dumpty with tiny legs dangling, while his large, delicate hands fluttered and deprecated, modifying the midnight syllables he spoke. But all the time his glistening black eyes stared unmoving at Pibble. If the cook had been a white man, Pibble realized, it would have been certain that he was frightened and lying, some old fence who’d had the bad luck to become involved with tearaways who’d taken him deeper in than even his cupidity cared for, and was now trying to wheedle his way out of trouble with sighs and grimaces and a straight, dishonest stare. But how could you tell what moved behind this alien phiz?

  No, he’d slept all night. No, he could think of no reason for anyone wanting to slay the chief. No, he knew of no way out of the hut save through the door which Elijah kept. Yes, he made the kava, and had put no more than the usual number of sleeping tablets in it. Yes, he would have been able to taste had someone else added more tablets—was he not the cook? What kind of a cook would he be if he could not taste a simple thing like that?