Otherwise there was an easy inefficiency3 to him now, a sleepiness to his gestures.
He dragged out the chair so she would turn, realize he was in the room.
“Hello, David.”
He raised his arm. He felt that he had been in deserts for too long.
“How is he?”
“Asleep. Talked himself out.”
“Is he what you thought he was?”
“He’s fine. We can let him be.”
“I thought so. Kip and I are both sure he is English. Kip thinks the best people are eccentrics, he worked withone.”
“I think Kip is the eccentric myself. Where is he, anyway?”
“He’s plotting something on the terrace, doesn’t want me out there. Something for my birthday.” Hana stood upfrom her crouch5 at the grate, wiping her hand on the opposite forearm.
“For your birthday I’m going to tell you a small story,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Not about Patrick, okay?”
“A little about Patrick, mostly about you.”
“I still can’t listen to those stories, David.”
“Fathers die. You keep on loving them in any way you can. You can’t hide him away in your heart.”
“Talk to me when the morphia wears off.”
She came up to him and put her arms around him, reached up and kissed his cheek. His embrace tightenedaround her, his stubble like sand against her skin. She loved that about him now; in the past he had always beenmeticulous. The parting in his hair like Yonge Street at midnight, Patrick had said. Caravaggio had in the pastmoved like a god in her pres.ence. Now, with his face and his trunk filled out and this greyness in him, he was afriendlier human.
Tonight dinner was being prepared by the sapper. Caravag.gio was not looking forward to it. One meal in threewas a loss as far as he was concerned. Kip found vegetables and pre.sented them barely cooked, just brieflyboiled into a soup. It was to be another purist meal, not what Caravaggio wished for after a day such as this whenhe had been listening to the man upstairs. He opened the cupboard beneath the sink. There, wrapped in dampcloth, was some dried meat, which Caravag.gio cut and put into his pocket.
“I can get you off the morphine, you know. I’m a good nurse.”
“You’re surrounded by madmen...”
“Yes, I think we are all mad.”
When Kip called them, they walked out of the kitchen and onto the terrace, whose border, with its low stonebalustrade, was ringed with light.
It looked to Caravaggio like a string of small electric candles found in dusty churches, and he thought the sapperhad gone too far in removing them from a chapel8, even for Hana’s birth.day. Hana walked slowly forward withher hands over her face. There was no wind. Her legs and thighs9 moved through the skirt of her frock as if itwere thin water. Her tennis shoes silent on the stone.
“I kept finding dead shells wherever I was digging,” the sapper said.
They still didn’t understand. Caravaggio bent10 over the flut.ter of lights. They were snail11 shells filled with oil. Helooked along the row of them; there must have been about forty.
“Forty-five,” Kip said, “the years so far of this century. Where I come from, we celebrate the age as well asourselves.”
Hana moved alongside them, her hands in her pockets now, the way Kip loved to see her walk. So relaxed, as ifshe had put her arms away for the night, now in simple armless movement.
Caravaggio was diverted by the startling presence of three bottles of red wine on the table. He walked over andread the labels and shook his head, amazed. He knew the sapper wouldn’t drink any of it. All three had alreadybeen opened. Kip must have picked his way through some etiquette12 book in the library. Then he saw the cornand the meat and the pota.toes. Hana slid her arm into Kip’s and came with him to the table.
They ate and drank, the unexpected thickness of the wine like meat on their tongues. They were soon turningsilly in their toasts to the sapper—”the great forager”—and to the English patient. They toasted each other, Kipjoining in with his beaker of water. This was when he began to talk about himself. Caravaggio pressing him on,not always listening, sometimes standing13 up and walking around the table, pacing and pacing with pleasure at allthis. He wanted these two married, longed to force them verbally towards it, but they seemed to have their ownstrange rules about their relation.ship. What was he doing in this role. He sat down again. Now and then henoticed the death of a light. The snail shells held only so much oil. Kip would rise and refill them with pinkparaffin.
“We must keep them lit till midnight.”
They talked then about the war, so far away. “When the war with Japan is over, everyone will finally go home,”
Kip said. “And where will you go?” Caravaggio asked. The sapper rolled his head, half nodding, half shaking it,his mouth smil.ing. So Caravaggio began to talk, mostly to Kip.
The dog cautiously approached the table and laid its head on Caravaggio’s lap. The sapper asked for other storiesabout Toronto as if it were a place of peculiar14 wonders. Snow that drowned the city, iced up the harbour,ferryboats in the sum.mer where people listened to concerts. But what he was really interested in were the cluesto Hana’s nature, though she was evasive, veering15 Caravaggio away from stories that involved some moment ofher life. She wanted Kip to know her only in the present, a person perhaps more flawed or more compas.sionateor harder or more obsessed16 than the girl or young woman she had been then. In her life there was her motherAlice her father Patrick her stepmother Clara and Caravaggio. She had already admitted these names to Kip as ifthey were her credentials18, her dowry. They were faultless and needed no discussion. She used them likeauthorities in a book she could refer to on the right way to boil an egg, or the correct way to slip garlic into alamb. They were not to be questioned.
And now—because he was quite drunk—Caravaggio told the story of Hana’s singing the “Marseillaise,” whichhe had told her before. “Yes, I have heard the song,” said Kip, and he attempted a version of it. “No, you have tosing it out,” said Hana, “you have to sing it standing up!”
She stood up, pulled her tennis shoes off and climbed onto the table. There were four snail lights flickering19,almost dying, on the table beside her bare feet.
“This is for you. This is how you must learn to sing it, Kip. This is for you.”
She sang up into darkness beyond their snail light, beyond the square of light from the English patient’s roomand into the dark sky waving with shadows of cypress20. Her hands came out of their pockets.
Kip had heard the song in the camps, sung by groups of men, often during strange moments, such as before anim.promptu soccer match. And Caravaggio when he had heard it in the last few years of the war never reallyliked it, never liked to listen to it. In his heart he had Hana’s version from many years before. Now he listenedwith a pleasure because she was singing again, but this was quickly altered by the way she sang. Not the passionof her at sixteen but echoing the tentative circle of light around her in the darkness. She was singing it as if it wassomething scarred, as if one couldn’t ever again bring all the hope of the song together. It had been altered by thefive years leading to this night of her twenty-first birthday in the forty-fifth year of the twentieth century. Singingin the voice of a tired traveller, alone against every.thing. A new testament21. There was no certainty to the songanymore, the singer could only be one voice against all the mountains of power. That was the only sureness. Theone voice was the single unspoiled thing. A song of snail light. Caravaggio realized she was singing with andechoing the heart of the sapper.
In the tent there have been nights of no talk and nights full of talk. They are never sure what will occur, whosefraction of past will emerge, or whether touch will be anonymous22 and silent in their darkness. The intimacy23 ofher body or the body of her language in his ear—as they lie upon the air pillow he insists on blowing up andusing each night. He has been charmed by this Western invention. He dutifully releases the air and folds it intothree each morning, as he has done all the way up the landmass of Italy.
In the tent Kip nestles against her neck. He dissolves to her scratching fingernails across his skin. Or he has hismouth against her mouth, his stomach against her wrist.
She sings and hums. She thinks him, in this tent’s dark.ness, to be half bird—a quality of feather within him, thecold iron at his wrist. He moves sleepily whenever he is in such darkness with her, not quite quick as the world,whereas in daylight he glides25 through all that is random26 around him, the way colour glides against colour.
But at night he embraces torpor27. She cannot see his order and discipline without seeing his eyes. There isn’t akey to him. Everywhere she touches braille doorways28. As if organs, the heart, the rows of rib30, can be seen underthe skin, saliva31 across her hand now a colour. He has mapped her sadness more than any other. Just as she knowsthe strange path of love he has for his dangerous brother. “To be a wanderer is in our blood. That is why jailing ismost difficult for his nature and he would kill himself to get free.”
During the verbal nights, they travel his country of five rivers. The Sutlej, Jhelum, Ravi, Chenab, Beas. Heguides her into the great gurdwara, removing her shoes, watching as she washes her feet, covers her head. Whatthey enter was built in 1601, desecrated32 in 1757 and built again immediately. In 1830 gold and marble wereapplied. “If I took you before morning you would see first of all the mist over the water. Then it lifts to reveal thetemple in light. You will already be hearing the hymns33 of the saints—Ramananda, Nanak and Kabir. Singing isat the centre of worship. You hear the song, you smell the fruit from the temple gardens—pomegranates,oranges. The temple is a haven34 in the flux35 of life, accessible to all. It is the ship that crossed the ocean ofignorance.”
They move through the night, they move through the silver door to the shrine36 where the Holy Book lies under acanopy of brocades. The ragis sing the Book’s verses accompanied by musicians. They sing from four in themorning till eleven at night. The Granth Sahib is opened at random, a quotation37 selected, and for three hours,before the mist lifts off the lake to reveal the Golden Temple, the verses mingle38 and sway out with unbrokenreading.
Kip walks her beside a pool to the tree shrine where Baba Gujhaji, the first priest of the temple, is buried. A treeof superstitions39, four hundred and fifty years old. “My mother came here to tie a string onto a branch andbeseeched the tree for a son, and when my brother was born returned and asked to be blessed with another. Thereare sacred trees and magic water all over the Punjab.”
Hana is quiet. He knows the depth of darkness in her, her lack of a child and of faith. He is always coaxing40 herfrom the edge of her fields of sadness. A child lost. A father lost.
“I have lost someone like a father as well,” he has said. But she knows this man beside her is one of the charmed,who has grown up an outsider and so can switch allegiances, can replace loss. There are those destroyed byunfairness and those who are not. If she asks him he will say he has had a good life —his brother in jail, hiscomrades blown up, and he risking himself daily in this war.
In spite of the kindnesses in such people they were a terrible unfairness. He could be all day in a clay pitdismantling a bomb that might kill him at any moment, could come home from the burial of a fellow sapper, hisenergy saddened, but whatever the trials around him there was always solution and light. But she saw none. Forhim there were the various maps of fate, and at Amritsar’s temple all faiths and classes were welcome and atetogether. She herself would be allowed to place money or a flower onto the sheet spread upon the floor and thenjoin in the great permanent singing.
She wished for that. Her inwardness was a sadness of na.ture. He himself would allow her to enter any of histhirteen gates of character, but she knew that if he were in danger he would never turn to face her. He wouldcreate a space around himself and concentrate. This was his craft. Sikhs, he said, were brilliant at technology.
“We have a mystical closeness... what is it?” “Affinity41.” “Yes, affinity, with machines.”
He would be lost among them for hours, the beat of music within the crystal set whacking42 away at his foreheadand into his hair. She did not believe she could turn fully24 to him and be his lover. He moved at a speed thatallowed him to replace loss. That was his nature. She would not judge it in him. What right did she have. Kipstepping out each morning with his satchel43 hanging off his left shoulder and walking the path away from theVilla San Girolamo. Each morning she watched him, seeing his freshness towards the world perhaps for the lasttime. After a few minutes he would look up into the shrapnel-torn cypresses44, whose middle branches had beenshelled away. Pliny must have walked down a path like this, or Stendahl, because passages in The Charterhouseof Parma had occurred in this part of the world too.
Kip would look up, the arch of the high wounded trees over him, the path in front of him mediaeval, and he ayoung man of the strangest profession his century had invented, a sapper, a military engineer who detected anddisarmed mines. Each morning he emerged from the tent, bathed and dressed in the garden, and stepped awayfrom the villa and its surroundings, not even entering the house—maybe a wave if he saw her— as if language,humanity, would confuse him, get, like blood, into the machine he had to understand. She would see him fortyyards from the house, in a clearing of the path.
It was the moment he left them all behind. The moment the drawbridge closed behind the knight45 and he wasalone with just the peacefulness of his own strict talent. In Siena there was that mural she had seen. A fresco46 of acity. A few yards outside the city walls the artist’s paint had crumbled48 away, so there was not even the securityof art to provide an orchard49 in the far acres for the traveller leaving the castle. That was where, she felt, Kip wentduring the day. Each morning he would step from the painted scene towards dark bluffs50 of chaos51. The knight.
The warrior52 saint. She would see the khaki uniform flickering through the cypresses. The English.man hadcalled himfato profugus—fate’s fugitive53. She guessed that these days began for him with the pleasure of liftinghis eyes up to the trees.
They had flown the sappers into Naples at the beginning of October 1943, selecting the best from the engineeringcorps that were already in southern Italy, Kip among the thirty men who were brought into the booby-trappedcity.
The Germans in the Italian campaign had choreographed54 one of the most brilliant and terrible retreats in history.
The advance of the Allies, which should have taken a month, took a year. There was fire in their path. Sappersrode the mud.guards of trucks as the armies moved forward, their eyes searching for fresh soil disturbances55 thatsignalled land mines or glass mines or shoe mines. The advance impossibly slow. Farther north in the mountains,partisan bands of Garibaldi communist groups, who wore identifying red handkerchiefs, were also wiringexplosives over the roads which detonated when German trucks passed over them.
The scale of the laying of mines in Italy and in North Africa cannot be imagined. At the Kismaayo-Afmadu roadjunction, 260 mines were found. There were 300 at the Omo River Bridge area. On June 30, 1941, South Africansappers laid 2,700 Mark 11 mines in Mersa Matruh in one day. Four months later the British cleared MersaMatruh of 7,806 mines and placed them elsewhere.
Mines were made out of everything. Forty-centimetre gal56.vanized pipes were filled with explosives and leftalong military paths. Mines in wooden boxes were left in homes. Pipe mines were filled with gelignite, metalscraps and nails. South Afri.can sappers packed iron and gelignite into four-gallon petrol cans that could thendestroy armoured cars.
It was worst in the cities. Bomb disposal units, barely trained, were shipped out from Cairo and Alexandria. TheEighteenth Division became famous. During three weeks in October 1941, they dismantled57 1,403 high-explosivebombs.
Italy was worse than Africa, the clockwork fuzes nightmar-ishly eccentric, the spring-activated mechanismsdifferent from the German ones that units had been trained in. As sappers entered cities they walked alongavenues where corpses58 were strung from trees or the balconies of buildings. The Germans often retaliated59 bykilling ten Italians for every German killed. Some of the hanging corpses were mined and had to be blown up inmidair.
The Germans evacuated60 Naples on October i, 1943. Dur.ing an Allied61 raid the previous September, hundreds ofciti.zens had walked away and begun living in the caves outside the city. The Germans in their retreat bombedthe entrance to the caves, forcing the citizens to stay underground. A ty.phus epidemic62 broke out. In the harbourscuttled ships were freshly mined underwater.
The thirty sappers walked into a city of booby traps. There were delayed-action bombs sealed into the walls ofpublic buildings. Nearly every vehicle was rigged. The sappers be.came permanently63 suspicious of any objectplaced casually64 in a room. They distrusted everything they saw on a table unless it was placed facing “fouro’clock.” Years after the war a sap.per putting a pen on a table would position it with the thicker end facing fouro’clock.
Naples continued as a war zone for six weeks and Kip was there with the unit for the whole period. After twoweeks they discovered the citizens in the caves. Their skin dark with shit and typhus. The procession of themback into the city hospi.tals was one of ghosts.
Four days later the central post office blew up, and seventy-two were killed or wounded. The richest collectionof mediae.val records in Europe had already burned in the city archives.
On the twentieth of October, three days before electricity was to be restored, a German turned himself in. He toldau.thorities that there were thousands of bombs hidden in the harbour section of the city that were wired to thedormant electrical system. When power was turned on, the city would dissolve in flames. He was interrogatedmore than seven times, in differing stages of tact65 and violence—at the end of which the authorities were stilluncertain about his confession66. This time an entire area of the city was evacuated. Children and the old, thosealmost dead, those pregnant, those who had been brought out of the caves, animals, valuable jeeps, woundedsoldiers out of the hospitals, mental patients, priests and monks67 and nuns68 out of the abbeys. By dusk on theevening of October 22, 1943, only twelve sappers remained behind.
The electricity was to be turned on at three p.m. the next day. None of the sappers had ever been in an empty citybefore, and these were to be the strangest and most disturbing hours of their lives.
During the evenings thunderstorms roll over Tuscany. Light.ning drops towards any metal or spire69 that rises upout of the landscape. Kip always returns to the villa along the yellow path between the cypresses around seven inthe evening, which is when the thunder, if there is going to be thunder, begins. The mediaeval experience.
He seems to like such temporal habits. She or Caravaggio will see his figure in the distance, pausing in his walkhome to look back towards the valley to see how far away the rain is from him. Hana and Caravaggio return tothe house. Kip continues his half-mile uphill walk on the path that curls slowly to the right and then slowly to theleft. There is the noise of his boots on the gravel71. The wind reaches him in bursts, hitting the cypresses broadsideso they tilt72, entering the sleeves of his shirt.
For the next ten minutes he walks, never sure if the rain will overtake him. He will hear the rain before he feelsit, a clicking on the dry grass, on the olive leaves. But for now he is in the great refreshing74 wind of the hill, in theforeground of the storm.
If the rain reaches him before he gets to the villa, he contin.ues walking at the same pace, snaps the rubber capeover his haversack and walks on within it.
In his tent he hears the pure thunder. Sharp cracks of it overhead, a coach-wheel sound as it disappears into themoun.tains. A sudden sunlight of lightning through the tent wall, always, it seems to him, brighter than sunlight,a flash of contained phosphorus, something machinelike, to do with the new word he has heard in the theoryrooms and through his crystal set, which is “nuclear.” In the tent he unwinds the wet turban, dries his hair andweaves another around his head.
The storm rolls out of Piedmont to the south and to the east. Lightning falls upon the steeples of the small alpinechapels whose tableaux76 reenact the Stations of the Cross or the Mysteries of the Rosary. In the small towns ofVarese and Varallo, larger-than-life terra-cotta figures carved in the i6oos are revealed briefly7, depicting77 biblicalscenes. The bound arms of the scourged78 Christ pulled back, the whip coming down, the baying dog, threesoldiers in the next chapel tableau75 rais.ing the crucifix higher towards the painted clouds.
The Villa San Girolamo, located where it is, also receives such moments of light—the dark halls, the room theEnglishman lies in, the kitchen where Hana is laying a fire, the shelled chapel—all lit suddenly, without shadow.
Kip will walk with no qualms79 under the trees in his patch of garden during such storms, the dangers of beingkilled by lightning pathetically minimal80 compared with the danger of his daily life. The naive81 Catholic imagesfrom those hillside shrines82 that he has seen are with him in the half-darkness, as he counts the seconds betweenlightning and thunder. Perhaps this villa is a similar tableau, the four of them in private movement, momentarilylit up, flung ironically against this war.
The twelve sappers who remained behind in Naples fanned out into the city. All through the night they havebroken into sealed tunnels, descended83 into sewers84, looking for fuze lines that might be linked with the centralgenerators. They are to drive away at two p.m., an hour before the electricity is to be turned on.
A city of twelve. Each in separate parts of the town. One at the generator85, one at the reservoir, still diving—theauthori.ties most certain destruction will be caused by flooding. How to mine a city. It is unnerving mostlybecause of the silence. All they hear of the human world are barking dogs and bird songs that come fromapartment windows above the streets. When the time comes, he will go into one of the rooms with a bird. Somehuman thing in this vacuum. He passes the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, where the remnants of Pompeii andHerculaneum are housed. He has seen the ancient dog frozen in white ash.
The scarlet86 sapper light strapped87 to his left arm is turned on as he walks, the only source of light on the StradaCarbonara. He is exhausted88 from the night search, and now there seems little to do. Each of them has aradiophone, but it is to be used only for an emergency discovery. It is the terrible silence in the empty courtyardsand the dry fountains that makes him most tired.
At one p.m. he traces his way towards the damaged Church of San Giovanni a Carbonara, where he knows thereis a chapel of the Rosary. He had been walking through the church a few evenings earlier when lightning filledthe dark.ness, and he had seen large human figures in the tableau. An angel and a woman in a bedroom.
Darkness replaced the brief scene and he sat in a pew waiting, but there was to be no more revelation.
He enters that corner of the church now, with the terra.cotta figures painted the colour of white humans. Thescene depicts90 a bedroom where a woman is in conversation with an angel. The woman’s curly brown hair revealsitself under the loose blue cape70, the fingers of her left hand touching91 her breastbone. When he steps forward intothe room he realizes everything is larger than life. His own head is no higher than the shoulder of the woman.
The angel’s raised arm reaches fifteen feet in height. Still, for Kip, they are company. It is an inhabited room,and he walks within the discussion of these creatures that represent some fable92 about mankind and heaven.
He slips his satchel from his shoulder and faces the bed. He wants to lie on it, hesitating only because of thepresence of the angel. He has already walked around the ethereal body and noticed the dusty light bulbs attachedto its back beneath the dark coloured wings, and he knows in spite of his desire that he could not sleep easily inthe presence of such a thing. There are three pairs of stage slippers93, a set designer’s subtlety94, peek95.ing out fromunder the bed. It is about one-forty.
He spreads his cape on the floor, flattens96 the satchel into a pillow and lies down on the stone. Most of hischildhood in Lahore he slept on a mat on the floor of his bedroom. And in truth he has never gotten accustomedto the beds of the West. A pallet and an air pillow are all he uses in his tent, whereas in England when stayingwith Lord Suffolk he sank claustro-phobically into the dough98 of a mattress99, and lay there captive and awake untilhe crawled out to sleep on the carpet.
He stretches out beside the bed. The shoes too, he notices, are larger than life. The feet of Amazonians slip intothem. Above his head the tentative right arm of the woman. Beyond his feet the angel. Soon one of the sapperswill turn on the city’s electricity, and if he is going to explode he will do so in the company of these two. Theywill die or be secure. There is nothing more he can do, anyway. He has been up all night on a final search forcaches of dynamite100 and time cartridges102. Walls will crumble47 around him or he will walk through a city of light. Atleast he has found these parental103 figures. He can relax in the midst of this mime104 of conversation.
He has his hands under his head, interpreting a new tough.ness in the face of the angel he didn’t notice before.
The white flower it holds has fooled him. The angel too is a warrior. In the midst of this series of thoughts hiseyes close and he gives in to tiredness.
He is sprawled out with a smile on his face, as if relieved finally to be sleeping, the luxuriousness105 of such a thing.
The palm of his left hand facedown on the concrete. The colour of his turban echoes that of the lace collar at theneck of Mary.
At her feet the small Indian sapper, in uniform, beside the six slippers. There seems to be no time here. Each ofthem has selected the most comfortable of positions to forget time. So we will be remembered by others. In suchsmiling comfort when we trust our surroundings. The tableau now, with Kip at the feet of the two figures,suggests a debate over his fate. The raised terra-cotta arm a stay of execution, a promise of some great future forthis sleeper106, childlike, foreign-born. The three of them almost at the point of decision, agreement.
Under the thin layer of dust the angel’s face has a powerful joy. Attached to its back are the six light bulbs, twoof which are defunct107. But in spite of that the wonder of electricity suddenly lights its wings from underneath108, sothat their blood-red and blue and goldness the colour of mustard fields shine animated109 in the late afternoon.
Wherever Hana is now, in the future, she is aware of the line of movement Kip’s body followed out of her life.
Her mind repeats it. The path he slammed through among them. When he turned into a stone of silence in theirmidst. She recalls everything of that August day—what the sky was like, the objects on the table in front of hergoing dark under the thunder.
She sees him in the field, his hands clasped over his head, then realizes this is a gesture not of pain but of hisneed to hold the earphones tight against his brain. He is a hundred yards away from her in the lower field whenshe hears a scream emerge from his body which had never raised its voice among them. He sinks to his knees, asif unbuckled. Stays like that and then slowly gets up and moves in a diagonal towards his tent, enters it, andcloses the flaps behind him. There is the dry crackle of thunder and she sees her arms darken.
Kip emerges from the tent with the rifle. He comes into the Villa San Girolamo and sweeps past her, moving likea steel ball in an arcade110 game, through the doorway29 and up the stairs three steps at a time, his breathmetronomed, the hit of his boots against the vertical111 sections of stairs. She hears his feet along the hallway as shecontinues to sit at the table in the kitchen, the book in front of her, the pencil, these objects frozen and shadowedin the pre-storm light.
He enters the bedroom. He stands at the foot of the bed where the English patient lies. Hello, sapper.
The rifle stock is against his chest, its sling112 braced113 against his triangled arm.
What was going on outside?
Kip looks condemned114, separate from the world, his brown face weeping. The body turns and fires into the oldfountain, and the plaster explodes dust onto the bed. He pivots115 back so the rifle points at the Englishman. Hebegins to shudder116, and then everything in him tries to control that.
Put down the gun, Kip.
He slams his back against the wall and stops his shaking. Plaster dust in the air around them.
I sat at the foot of this bed and listened to you, Uncle. These last months. When I was a kid I did that, the samething. I believed I could fill myself up with what older people taught me. I believed I could carry that knowledge,slowly altering it, but in any case passing it beyond me to another.
I grew up with traditions from my country, but later, more often, from your country. Your fragile white islandthat with customs and manners and books and prefects and reason some.how converted the rest of the world.
You stood for precise behaviour. I knew if I lifted a teacup with the wrong finger I’d be banished117. If I tied thewrong kind of knot in a tie I was out. Was it just ships that gave you such power? Was it, as my brother said,because you had the histories and printing presses?
You and then the Americans converted us. With your mis.sionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their livesas heroes so they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this? Here... listen towhat you people have done.
He throws the rifle on the bed and moves towards the Eng.lishman. The crystal set is at his side, hanging off hisbelt. He unclips it and puts the earphones over the black head of the patient, who winces118 at the pain on his scalp.
But the sapper leaves them on him. Then he walks back and picks up the rifle. He sees Hana at the door.
One bomb. Then another. Hiroshima. Nagasaki.
He swerves120 the rifle towards the alcove121. The hawk122 in the valley air seems to float intentionally123 into the V sight.
If he closes his eyes he sees the streets of Asia full of fire. It rolls across cities like a burst map, the hurricane ofheat withering124 bodies as it meets them, the shadow of humans suddenly in the air. This tremor125 of Westernwisdom.
He watches the English patient, earphones on, the eyes focused inwards, listening. The rifle sight moves downthe thin nose to the Adam’s apple, above the collarbone. Kip stops breathing. Braced at exact right angles to theEnfield rifle. No waver.
Then the Englishman’s eyes look back at him.
Sapper.
Caravaggio enters the room and reaches for him, and Kip wheels the butt126 of the rifle into his ribs127. A swat fromthe paw of an animal. And then, as if part of the same movement, he is back in the braced right-angle position ofthose in firing squads128, drilled into him in various barracks in India and Eng.land. The burned neck in his sights.
Kip, talk to me.
Now his face is a knife. The weeping from shock and horror contained, seeing everything, all those around him,in a differ.ent light. Night could fall between them, fog could fall, and the young man’s dark brown eyes wouldreach the new re.vealed enemy.
My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers129. The contract makers. The map drawers.
Never trust Europeans, he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we were easily impressed—byspeeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years? Cutting away, defusing,limbs of evil. For what? For this to happen?
What is it? Jesus, tell us!
I’ll leave you the radio to swallow your history lesson. Don’t move again, Caravaggio. All those speeches ofcivilisation from kings and queens and presidents... such voices of abstract order. Smell it. Listen to the radio andsmell the celebration in it. In my country, when a father breaks justice in two, you kill the father.
You don’t know who this man is.
The rifle sight unwavering at the burned neck. Then the sapper swerves it up towards the man’s eyes.
Do it, Almasy says.
The eyes of the sapper and the patient meet in this half-dark room crowded now with the world.
He nods to the sapper.
Do it, he says quietly.
Kip ejects the cartridge101 and catches it as it begins to fall. He throws the rifle onto the bed, a snake, its venomcollected. He sees Hana on the periphery131.
The burned man untugs the earphones off his head and slowly places them down in front of him. Then his lefthand reaches up and pulls away the hearing aid, and drops it to the floor.
Do it, Kip. I don’t want to hear any more.
He closes his eyes. Slips into darkness, away from the room.
The sapper leans against the wall, his hands folded, head down. Caravaggio can hear air being breathed in andout of his nostrils132, fast and hard, a piston133.
He isn’t an Englishman.
American, French, I don’t care. When you start bombing the brown races of the world, you’re an Englishman.
You had King Leopold of Belgium and now you have fucking Harry134 Truman of the USA. You all learned it fromthe English.
No. Not him. Mistake. Of all people he is probably on your side.
He would say that doesn’t matter, Hana says.
Caravaggio sits down in the chair. He is always, he thinks, sitting in this chair. In the room there is the thinsquawking from the crystal set, the radio still speaking in its underwater voice. He cannot bear to turn and look atthe sapper or look towards the blur135 of Hana’s frock. He knows the young soldier is right. They would never havedropped such a bomb on a white nation.
The sapper walks out of the room, leaving Caravaggio and Hana by the bed. He has left the three of them to theirworld, is no longer their sentinel. In the future, if and when the patient dies, Caravaggio and the girl will buryhim. Let the dead bury the dead. He has never been sure what that meant. Those few callous136 words in the Bible.
They will bury everything except the book. The body, the sheets, his clothes, the rifle. Soon he will be alone withHana. And the motive137 for all this on the radio. A terrible event emerging out of the shortwave. A new war. Thedeath of a civilisation130.
Still night. He can hear nighthawks, their faint cries, the muted thud of wings as they turn. The cypress trees riseover his tent, still on this windless night. He lies back and stares into the dark corner of the tent. When he closeshis eyes he sees fire, people leaping into rivers into reservoirs to avoid flame or heat that within seconds burnseverything, whatever they hold, their own skin and hair, even the water they leap into. The brilliant bomb carriedover the sea in a plane, pass.ing the moon in the east, towards the green archipelago. And released.
He has not eaten food or drunk water, is unable to swallow anything. Before light failed he stripped the tent of allmilitary objects, all bomb disposal equipment, stripped all insignia off his uniform. Before lying down he undidthe turban and combed his hair out and then tied it up into a topknot and lay back, saw the light on the skin of thetent slowly disperse139, his eyes holding onto the last blue of light, hearing the drop of wind into windlessness andthen hearing the swerve119 of the hawks138 as their wings thudded. And all the delicate noises of the air.
He feels all the winds of the world have been sucked into Asia. He steps away from the many small bombs of hiscareer towards a bomb the size, it seems, of a city, so vast it lets the living witness the death of the populationaround them. He knows nothing about the weapon. Whether it was a sudden assault of metal and explosion or ifboiling air scoured140 itself towards and through anything human. All he knows is, he feels he can no longer letanything approach him, cannot eat the food or even drink from a puddle141 on a stone bench on the terrace. He doesnot feel he can draw a mateh out of his bag and fire the lamp, for he believes the lamp will ignite every.thing. Inthe tent, before the light evaporated, he had brought out the photograph of his family and gazed at it. His name isKirpal Singh and he does not know what he is doing here.
He stands now under the trees in the August heat, untur-banned, wearing only a kurta. He carries nothing in hishands, just walks alongside the outline,of hedges, his bare feet on the grass or on terrace stone or in the ash of anold bonfire. His body alive in its sleeplessness142, standing on the edge of a great valley of Europe.
In the early morning she sees him standing beside the tent. During the evening she had watched for some lightamong the trees. Each of them in the villa had eaten alone that night, the Englishman eating nothing. Now shesees the sapper’s arm sweep out and the canvas walls collapse143 on themselves like a sail. He turns and comestowards the house, climbs the steps onto the terrace and disappears.
In the chapel he moves past the burned pews towards the apse, where under a tarpaulin144 weighted down withbranches is the motorbike. He begins dragging the covering off the ma.chine. He crouches145 down by the bike andbegins nuzzling oil into the sprockets and cogs.
When Hana comes into the roofless chapel he is sitting there leaning his back and head against the wheel.
Kip.
He says nothing, looking through her.
Kip, it’s me. What did we have to do with it?
He is a stone in front of her.
She kneels down to his level and leans forward into him, the side of her head against his chest, holding herselflike that.
A beating heart.
When his stillness doesn’t alter she rolls back onto her knees.
The Englishman once read me something, from a book: “Love is so small it can tear itself through the eye of aneedle.”
He leans to his side away from her, his face stopping a few inches from a rain puddle.
A boy and a girl.
While the sapper unearthed146 the motorcycle from under the tarpaulin, Caravaggio leaned forward on the parapet,his chin against his forearm. Then he felt he couldn’t bear the mood of the house and walked away. He wasn’tthere when the sapper gunned the motorbike to life and sat on it while it half bucked147, alive under him, and Hanastood nearby.
Singh touched her arm and let the machine roll away, down the slope, and only then revved148 it to life.
Halfway149 down the path to the gate, Caravaggio was waiting for him, carrying the gun. He didn’t even lift itformally towards the motorbike when the boy slowed down, as Caravag.gio walked into his path. Caravaggiocame up to him and put his arms around him. A great hug. The sapper felt the stubble against his skin for the firsttime. He felt drawn150 in, gathered into the muscles. “I shall have to learn how to miss you,” Caravaggio said. Thenthe boy pulled away and Caravaggio walked back to the house.
The machine broke into life around him. The smoke of the Triumph and dust and fine gravel fell away throughthe trees. The bike leapt the cattle grid151 at the gates, and then he was weaving down out of the village, passing thesmell of gardens on either side of him that were tacked152 onto the slopes in their treacherous153 angle.
His body slipped into a position of habit, his chest parallel with, almost touching, the petrol tank, his armshorizontal in the shape of least resistance. He went south, avoiding Flor.ence completely. Through Greve, acrossto Montevarchi and Ambra, small towns ignored by war and invasion. Then, as the new hills appeared, he beganto climb the spine154 of them towards Cortona.
He was travelling against the direction of the invasion, as if rewinding the spool156 of war, the route no longer tensewith military. He took only roads he knew, seeing the familiar cas.tle towns from a distance. He lay static on theTriumph as it burned under him in its tear along the country roads. He carried little, all weapons left behind. Thebike hurled157 through each village, not slowing for town or memory of war. “The earth shall reel to and fro like adrunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage.”
She opened up his knapsack. There was a pistol wrapped in oilskin, so that its smell was released when sheuncovered it. Toothbrush and tooth powder, pencil sketches158 in a notebook, including a drawing of her—she wassitting on the terrace and he had been looking down from the Englishman’s room. Two turbans, a bottle ofstarch. One sapper lamp with its leather straps159, to be worn in emergencies. She flicked160 it on and the knapsackfilled with crimson161 light.
In the side pockets she found pieces of equipment to do with bomb disposal, which she didn’t wish to touch.
Wrapped up in another small piece of cloth was the metal spile she had given him, which was used for tappingmaple sugar out of a tree in her country.
From within the collapsed162 tent she unearthed a portrait that must have been of his family. She held thephotograph in her palm. A Sikh and his family.
An older brother who was only eleven in this picture. Kip beside him, eight years old. “When the war came mybrother sided with whoever was against the English,”
There was also a small handbook that had a map of bombs. And a drawing of a saint accompanied by a musician.
She packed everything back in except the photograph, which she held in her free hand. She carried the bagthrough the trees, walked across the loggia and brought it into the house.
Each hour or so he slowed to a stop, spat163 into the goggles164 and wiped dust off with the sleeve of his shirt. Helooked into the map again. He would go to the Adriatic, then south. Most of the troops were at the northernborders.
He climbed into Cortona, the high-pitched gunning of the bike all around him. He rode the Triumph up the stepsto the door of the church and then walked in. A statue was there, bandaged in scaffold. He wanted to get closer tothe face, but he had no rifle telescope and his body felt too stiff to climb up the construction pipes. He wanderedaround un.derneath like somebody unable to enter the intimacy of a home. He walked the bike down the churchsteps, and then coasted down through the shattered vineyards and went on to Arezzo.
At Sansepolcro he took a winding155 road into the mountains, into their mist, so he had to slow to minimal speed.
The Bocca Trabaria. He was cold but locked the weather out of his mind. Finally the road rose above thewhiteness, the mist a bed behind him. He skirted Urbino where the Germans had burned all the field horses ofthe enemy. They had fought here in this region for a month; now he slid through in minutes, recognizing only theBlack Madonna shrines. The war had made all the cities and towns similar.
He came down towards the coast. Into Gabicce Mare165, where he had seen the Virgin166 emerge from the sea. Heslept on the hill, overlooking cliff and water, near where the statue had been taken. That was the end of his firstday.
Dear Clara—Dear Maman,Maman is a French word, Clara, a circular word, suggest.ing cuddles, a personal word that can be even shoutedin public. Something as comforting and as eternal as a barge167. Though you, in spirit, I know are still a canoe. Canswerve one around and enter a creek168 in seconds. Still independent. Still private. Not a barge responsible for allaround you. This is my first letter in years, Clara, and I am not used to the formality of them. I have spent the lastfew months living with three others, and our talk has been slow, casual. I am not used to talking in any way butthat now.
The year is 194-. What? For a second I forget. But I know the month and the day. One day after we heard thebombs were dropped in japan, so it feels like the end of the world. From now on I believe the personal willforever be at war with the public. If we can rationalize this we can rationalize anything.
Patrick died in a dove-cot in France. In France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they built them huge,larger than most houses. Like this.
The horizontal line one-third of the way down was called the rat ledge—to stop rats running up the brick, so thedoves would be safe. Safe as a dove-cot. A sacred place. Like a church in many ways. A comforting place.
Patrick died in a comforting place.
At five a.m. he kicked the Triumph to life, and the rear wheel threw gravel in a skirt. He was still in darkness,still unable to distinguish sea in the vista169 beyond the cliff. For the journey from here to the south he had no maps,but he could recognize the war roads and follow the coast route. When sunlight came he was able to double hisspeed. The rivers were still ahead of him.
Around two in the afternoon he reached Ortona, where the sappers had laid the Bailey bridges, nearly drowningin the storm in mid-river. It began to rain and he stopped to put on a rubber cape. He walked around the machinein the wetness. Now, as he travelled, the sound in his ears changed. The shush shush replacing the whine170 andhowl, the water flung onto his boots from the front wheel. Everything he saw through the goggles was grey. Hewould not think of Hana. In all the silence within the bike’s noise he did not think of her.
When her face appeared he erased171 it, pulled the handlebars so he would swerve and have to concentrate. If therewere to be words they would not be hers; they would be names on this map of Italy he was riding through.
He feels he carries the body of the Englishman with him in this flight. It sits on the petrol tank facing him, theblack body in an embrace with his, facing the past over his shoulder, facing the countryside they are flying from,that receding172 pal97.ace4 of strangers on the Italian hill which shall never be re.built. “And my words which I haveput in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth. Nor out of the mouth of thy seed. Nor out of the mouth of thyseed’s seed.”
The voice of the English patient sang Isaiah into his ear as he had that afternoon when the boy had spoken of theface on the chapel ceiling in Rome. “There are of course a hundred Isaiahs. Someday you will want to see him asan old man—in southern France the abbeys celebrate him as bearded and old, but the power is still there in hislook.” The Englishman had sung out into the painted room. “Behold, the Lord will carry thee away with amighty captivity173, and He will surely cover thee. He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a largecountry.”
He was riding deeper into thick rain. Because he had loved the face on the ceiling he had loved the words. As hehad believed in the burned man and the meadows of civilisation he tended. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Solomonwere in the burned man’s bedside book, his holy book, whatever he had loved glued into his own. He had passedhis book to the sapper, and the sapper had said we have a Holy Book too.
The rubber lining174 on the goggles had cracked during the past months and the rain now began filling each pocketof air in front of his eyes. He would ride without them, the shush shush a permanent sea in his ears, and hiscrouched body stiff, cold, so there was only the idea of heat from this machine he rode so intimately, the whitespray of it as he slid through villages like a slipping star, a half-second of visitation when one could make a wish.
“For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke and the earth shall wax old like a garment. And they that dwelltherein shall die in like manner. For the moth17 shall eat them up like a garment, and the worms shall eat them likewool.” A secret of deserts from Uweinat to Hiroshima.
He was removing the goggles as he came out of the curve and onto the bridge over the Ofanto River. And withhis left arm up holding the goggles free he began to skid175. He dropped them and calmed the bike but was notprepared for the iron bounce onto the lip of the bridge, the bike lying down to the right underneath him. He wassuddenly sliding with it along the skin of rainwater down the centre of the bridge, blue sparks from thescratching metal around his arms and face.
Heavy tin flew off and shouldered past him. Then he and the bike veered176 to the left, there was no side to thebridge, and they hurtled out parallel to the water, he and the bike side.ways, his arms flung back above his head.
The cape released itself away from him, from whatever was machine and mortal, part of the element of air.
The motorbike and the soldier stilled in midair, then pivoted177 down into the water, the metal body between hislegs as they slammed into it, jarring a white path through it, disappearing, the rain too entering the river. “He willtoss thee like a ball into a large country.”
How did Patrick end up in a dove-cot, Clara? His unit had left him, burned and wounded. So burned the buttonsof his shirt were part of his skin, part of his dear chest. That I kissedand you kissed. And how was my father burned? He who could swerve like an eel73, or like your canoe, as ifcharmed, from the real world. In his sweet and complicated innocence178. He was the most unverbal of men, and Iam always surprised women liked him. We tend to like a verbal man around us. We are the rationalists, the wise,and he was often lost, uncertain, unspoken.
He was a burned man and I was a nurse and I could have nursed him. Do you understand the sadness ofgeography? I could have saved him or at least been with him till the end. I know a lot about burning. How longwas he alone with doves and rats? With the last stages of blood and life in him? Doves over him. The flutterwhen they thrashed around him. Unable to sleep in the darkness. He always hated darkness. And he was alone,without lover or kin6.
I am sick of Europe, Clara. 1 want to come home. To your small cabin and pink rock in Georgian Bay. I will takea bus up to Parry Sound. And from the mainland send a message over the shortwave radio out towards thePancakes. And wait for you, wait to see the silhouette179 of you in a canoe coming to rescue me from this place weall entered, betraying you. How did you become so smart? How did you become so determined180? How were younot fooled like us? You that demon181 for pleasure who became so wise. The purest among us, the darkest bean, thegreenest leaf.
HanaThe sapper’s bare head comes out of the water, and he gasps182 in all the air above the river.
Caravaggio has made a one-strand bridge with hemp183 rope down to the roof of the next villa. The rope istightened at this end round the waist of the statue of Demetrius and then secured to the well. The rope barelyhigher than the tops of the two olive trees along his path. If he loses his balance he will fall into the rough dustyarms of the olive.
He steps onto it, his socked feet gripping the hemp. How valuable is that statue? he once asked Hana casually,and she told him the English patient had said all statues of Demetrius were worthless.
She seals the letter and stands up, moves across the room to close the window, and at that moment lightning slipsthrough the valley. She sees Caravaggio in midair halfway across the gorge184 that lies like a deep scar alongsidethe villa. She stands there as if in one of her dreams, then climbs into the window alcove and sits there lookingout.
Every time there is lightning, rain freezes in the suddenly lit night. She sees the buzzard hawks flung up into thesky, looks for Caravaggio.
He is halfway across when he smells the rain, and then it begins to fall all over his body, clinging to him, andsuddenly there is the greater weight of his clothes.
She puts her cupped palms out of the window and combs the rain into her hair.
The villa drifts in darkness. In the hallway by the English patient’s bedroom the last candle burns, still alive inthe night.
Whenever he opens his eyes out of sleep, he sees the old wavering yellow light.
For him now the world is without sound, and even light seems an unneeded thing. He will tell the girl in themorning he wants no candle flame to accompany him while he sleeps.
Around three a.m. he feels a presence in the room. He sees, for a pulse of a moment, a figure at the foot of hisbed, against the wall or painted onto it perhaps, not quite discernible in the darkness of foliage185 beyond thecandlelight. He mutters something, something he had wanted to say, but there is si.lence and the slight brownfigure, which could be just a night shadow, does not move. A poplar. A man with plumes186. A swimming figure.
And he would not be so lucky, he thinks, to speak to the young sapper again.
He stays awake in any case this night, to see if the figure moves towards him. Ignoring the tablet that bringspainless-ness, he will remain awake till the light dies out and the smell of candle smoke drifts into his room andinto the girl’s room farther down the hall. If the figure turns around there will be paint on his back, where heslammed in grief against the mural of trees. When the candle dies out he will be able to see this. His hand reachesout slowly and touches his book and re.turns to his dark chest. Nothing else moves in the room.
Now where does he sit as he thinks of her? These years later. A stone of history skipping over the water,bouncing up so she and he have aged89 before it touches the surface again and sinks.
Where does he sit in his garden thinking once again he should go inside and write a letter or go one day down tothe telephone depot187, fill out a form and try to contact her in an.other country. It is this garden, this square patchof dry cut grass that triggers him back to the months he spent with Hana and Caravaggio and the English patientnorth of Florence in the Villa San Girolamo. He is a doctor, has two children and a laughing wife. He ispermanently busy in this city. At six p.m. he removes his white lab coat. Underneath he wears dark trousers anda short-sleeved shirt. He closes up the clinic, where all the paperwork has weights of various kinds—stones,inkpots, a toy truck his son no longer plays with—to keep it from being blown away by the fan. He climbs ontohis bicycle and pedals the four miles home, through the bazaar188. When.ever he can he swerves his bicycle over tothe shadowed part of the street. He has reached an age when he suddenly realizes that the sun of India exhaustshim.
He glides under the willows189 by the canal and then stops at a small neighbourhood of houses, removes his cycleclips and carries the bicycle down the steps into the small garden his wife has nurtured190.
And something this evening has brought the stone out of the water and allowed it to move back within the airtowards the hill town in Italy. It was perhaps the chemical burn on the arm of the girl he treated today. Or thestone stairway, where brown weeds grow ardently191 along the steps. He had been carrying his bicycle and washalfway up the steps before he remembered. This had been on the way to work, so the trigger of memory waspostponed when he got to the hospital and ran into seven hours of constant patients and administra.tion. Or itmight have been the burn on the young girl’s arm. He sits in the garden. And he watches Hana, her hair longer,in her own country. And what does she do? He sees her always, her face and body, but he doesn’t know what herprofession is or what her circumstances are, although he sees her reactions to people around her, her bendingdown to chil.dren, a white fridge door behind her, a background of noiseless tram cars. This is a limited gift hehas somehow been given, as if a camera’s film reveals her, but only her, in silence. He cannot discern thecompany she moves among, her judgement; all he can witness is her character and the lengthening192 of her darkhair, which falls again and then again into her eyes.
She will, he realizes now, always have a serious face. She has moved from being a young woman into having theangular look of a queen, someone who has made her face with her desire to be a certain kind of person. He stilllikes that about her. Her smartness, the fact that she did not inherit that look or that beauty, but that it wassomething searched for and that it will always reflect a present stage of her character. It seems every month ortwo he witnesses her this way, as if these moments of revelation are a continuation of the letters she wrote to himfor a year, getting no reply, until she stopped sending them, turned away by his silence. His character, hesupposed.
Now there are these urges to talk with her during a meal and return to that stage they were most intimate at in thetent or in the English patient’s room, both of which contained the turbulent river of space between them.
Recalling the time, he is just as fascinated at himself there as he is with her—boyish and earnest, his lithe193 armmoving across the air towards the girl he has fallen in love with. His wet boots are by the Italian door, the lacestied together, his arm reaches for her shoulder, there is the prone194 figure on the bed.
During the evening meal he watches his daughter struggling with her cutlery, trying to hold the large weapons inher small hands. At this table all of their hands are brown. They move with ease in their customs and habits. Andhis wife has taught them all a wild humour, which has been inherited by his son. He loves to see his son’s wit inthis house, how it surprises him constantly, going beyond even his and his wife’s knowl.edge and humour—theway he treats dogs on the streets, imitating their stroll, their look. He loves the fact that this boy can almost guessthe wishes of dogs from the variety of expres.sions at a dog’s disposal.
And Hana moves possibly in the company that is not her choice. She, at even this age, thirty-four, has not foundher own company, the ones she wanted. She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild love leaves outluck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now that only she can recognize in a mirror. Idealand idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She still remembers the lines of poems theEnglishman read out loud to her from his commonplace book. She is a woman I don’t know well enough to holdin my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life. And so Hana moves and her face turns andin a regret shelowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cupboard and a glass dislodges. Kirpal’s left hand swoopsdown and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, awrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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ace
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| n.A牌；发球得分；佼佼者；adj.杰出的 | |
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crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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veering
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| n.改变的；犹豫的；顺时针方向转向；特指使船尾转向上风来改变航向v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的现在分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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credentials
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| n.证明，资格，证明书，证件 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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cypress
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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anonymous
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intimacy
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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glides
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| n.滑行( glide的名词复数 )；滑音；音渡；过渡音v.滑动( glide的第三人称单数 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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27
torpor
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| n.迟钝；麻木；（动物的）冬眠 | |
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28
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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29
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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30
rib
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| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
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31
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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32
desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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33
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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34
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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35
flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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36
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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37
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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38
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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39
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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40
coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
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41
affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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42
whacking
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| adj.（用于强调）巨大的v.重击，使劲打( whack的现在分词 ) | |
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43
satchel
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| n.(皮或帆布的)书包 | |
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44
cypresses
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| n.柏属植物，柏树( cypress的名词复数 ) | |
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45
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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46
fresco
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| n.壁画；vt.作壁画于 | |
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47
crumble
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| vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁 | |
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48
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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49
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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50
bluffs
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| 恐吓( bluff的名词复数 )； 悬崖； 峭壁 | |
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51
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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52
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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53
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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54
choreographed
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| v.设计舞蹈动作( choreograph的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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56
gal
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| n.姑娘，少女 | |
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57
dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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58
corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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59
retaliated
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| v.报复，反击( retaliate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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61
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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62
epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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63
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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64
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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65
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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66
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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67
monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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68
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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69
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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70
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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71
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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72
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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73
eel
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| n.鳗鲡 | |
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74
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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75
tableau
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| n.画面，活人画（舞台上活人扮的静态画面） | |
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76
tableaux
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| n.舞台造型，（由活人扮演的）静态画面、场面；人构成的画面或场景( tableau的名词复数 )；舞台造型；戏剧性的场面；绚丽的场景 | |
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77
depicting
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| 描绘，描画( depict的现在分词 )； 描述 | |
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78
scourged
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| 鞭打( scourge的过去式和过去分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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79
qualms
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| n.不安；内疚 | |
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80
minimal
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| adj.尽可能少的，最小的 | |
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81
naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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82
shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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83
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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84
sewers
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| n.阴沟，污水管，下水道( sewer的名词复数 ) | |
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85
generator
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| n.发电机，发生器 | |
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86
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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87
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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88
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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89
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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90
depicts
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| 描绘，描画( depict的第三人称单数 )； 描述 | |
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91
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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92
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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93
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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94
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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95
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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96
flattens
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| 变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的第三人称单数 )； 彻底打败某人，使丢脸； 停止增长（或上升）； （把身体或身体部位）紧贴… | |
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97
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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98
dough
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| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
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99
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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100
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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101
cartridge
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| n.弹壳，弹药筒；(装磁带等的)盒子 | |
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102
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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103
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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104
mime
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| n.指手画脚，做手势，哑剧演员，哑剧；vi./vt.指手画脚的表演，用哑剧的形式表演 | |
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105
luxuriousness
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106
sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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107
defunct
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| adj.死亡的；已倒闭的 | |
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108
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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109
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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110
arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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111
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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112
sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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113
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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114
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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115
pivots
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| n.枢( pivot的名词复数 )；最重要的人（或事物）；中心；核心v.（似）在枢轴上转动( pivot的第三人称单数 )；把…放在枢轴上；以…为核心，围绕（主旨）展开 | |
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116
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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117
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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118
winces
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| 避开，畏缩( wince的名词复数 ) | |
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119
swerve
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| v.突然转向，背离；n．转向，弯曲，背离 | |
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120
swerves
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| n.（使）改变方向，改变目的( swerve的名词复数 )v.（使）改变方向，改变目的( swerve的第三人称单数 ) | |
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121
alcove
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| n.凹室 | |
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122
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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123
intentionally
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| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
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124
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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125
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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126
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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127
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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128
squads
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| n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍 | |
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129
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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130
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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131
periphery
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| n.(圆体的)外面；周围 | |
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132
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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133
piston
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| n.活塞 | |
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134
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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135
blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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136
callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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137
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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138
hawks
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| 鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物 | |
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139
disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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140
scoured
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| 走遍（某地）搜寻（人或物）( scour的过去式和过去分词 )； （用力）刷； 擦净； 擦亮 | |
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141
puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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142
sleeplessness
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| n.失眠，警觉 | |
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143
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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144
tarpaulin
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| n.涂油防水布，防水衣，防水帽 | |
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145
crouches
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| n.蹲着的姿势( crouch的名词复数 )v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的第三人称单数 ) | |
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146
unearthed
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| 出土的（考古） | |
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147
bucked
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| adj.快v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的过去式和过去分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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148
revved
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| v.（使）加速( rev的过去式和过去分词 )；（数量、活动等）激增；（使发动机）快速旋转；（使）活跃起来 | |
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149
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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150
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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151
grid
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| n.高压输电线路网；地图坐标方格；格栅 | |
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152
tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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153
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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154
spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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155
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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156
spool
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| n.（缠录音带等的）卷盘（轴）；v.把…绕在卷轴上 | |
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157
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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158
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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159
straps
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| n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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160
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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161
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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162
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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163
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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164
goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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165
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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166
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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167
barge
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| n.平底载货船，驳船 | |
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168
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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169
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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170
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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171
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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172
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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173
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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174
lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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175
skid
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| v.打滑 n.滑向一侧；滑道 ，滑轨 | |
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176
veered
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| v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的过去式和过去分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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177
pivoted
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| adj.转动的，回转的，装在枢轴上的v.（似）在枢轴上转动( pivot的过去式和过去分词 )；把…放在枢轴上；以…为核心，围绕（主旨）展开 | |
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178
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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179
silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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180
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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181
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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182
gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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183
hemp
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| n.大麻；纤维 | |
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184
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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185
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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186
plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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187
depot
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| n.仓库，储藏处；公共汽车站；火车站 | |
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188
bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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189
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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190
nurtured
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| 养育( nurture的过去式和过去分词 )； 培育； 滋长； 助长 | |
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191
ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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192
lengthening
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
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193
lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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194
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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