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I

The Villa

SHE STANDS UP in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather.
There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the
house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the
house.

In the kitchen she doesn’t pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the
long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.

She turns into the room which is another garden—this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling.
The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.

Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his
ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond
purple. Bone.

She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips.
Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted
onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky.

She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below
the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters.

What? she asks, coming out of her concentration.

He turns his dark face with its grey eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth,
withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.

He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of
memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.

There are stories the man recites quietly into the room which slip from level to level like a hawk. He wakes in the painted
arbour that surrounds him with its spilling flowers, arms of great trees. He remembers picnics, a woman who kissed parts of his
body that now are burned into the colour of aubergine.

I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking
into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of preoccupation.

His eyes lock onto the young woman’s face. If she moves her head, his stare will travel alongside her into the wall. She leans
forward. How were you burned?

It is late afternoon. His hands play with a piece of sheet, the back of his fingers caressing it.

I fell burning into the desert.

They found my body and made me a boat of sticks and dragged me across the desert. We were in the Sand Sea, now and
then crossing dry riverbeds. Nomads, you see. Bedouin. I flew down and the sand itself caught fire. They saw me stand up
naked out of it. The leather helmet on my head in flames. They strapped me onto a cradle, a carcass boat, and feet thudded
along as they ran with me. I had broken the spareness of the desert.

The Bedouin knew about fire. They knew about planes that since 1939 had been falling out of the sky. Some of their tools
and utensik were made from the metal of crashed planes and tanks. It was the time of the war in heaven. They could recognize
the drone of a wounded plane, they knew how to pick their way through such shipwrecks. A small bolt from a cockpit became
jewellery. I was perhaps the first one to stand up alive out of a burning machine. A man whose head was on fire. They didn’t
know my name. I didn’t know their tribe.

Who are you?

I don’t know. You keep asking me.

You said you were English.

At night he is never tired enough to sleep. She reads to him from whatever book she is able to find in the library downstairs.
The candle flickers over the page and over the young nurse’s talking face, barely revealing at this hour the trees and vista that
decorate the walls. He listens to her, swallowing her words like water.

If it is cold she moves carefully into the bed and lies beside him. She can place no weight upon him without giving him pain,
not even her thin wrist.

Sometimes at two a.m. he is not yet asleep, his eyes open in the darkness.

He could smell the oasis before he saw it. The liquid in the air. The rustle of things. Palms and bridles. The banging of tin


cans whose deep pitch revealed they were full of water.

They poured oil onto large pieces of soft cloth and placed them on him. He was anointed.

He could sense the one silent man who always remained beside him, the flavour of his breath when he bent down to unwrap
him every twenty-four hours at nightfall, to examine his skin in the dark.

Unclothed he was once again the man naked beside the blazing aircraft. They spread the layers of grey felt over him. What
great nation had found him, he wondered. What country invented such soft dates to be chewed by the man beside him and then
passed from that mouth into his. During this time with these people, he could not remember where he was from. He could have
been, for all he knew, the enemy he had been fighting from the air.

Later, at the hospital in Pisa, he thought he saw beside him the face that had come each night and chewed and softened the
dates and passed them down into his mouth.

There was no colour during those nights. No speech or song. The Bedouin silenced themselves when he was awake. He was
on an altar of hammock and he imagined in his vanity hundreds of them around him and there may have been just two who had
found him, plucked the antlered hat of fire from his head. Those two he knew only by the taste of saliva that entered him along
with the date or by the sound of their feet running.

She would sit and read, the book under the waver of light. She would glance now and then down the hall of the villa that had
been a war hospital, where she had lived with the other nurses before they had all transferred out gradually, the war moving
north, the war almost over.

This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world. She sat at
the night table, hunched over, reading of the young boy in India who learned to memorize diverse jewels and objects on a tray,
tossed from teacher to teacher—those who taught him dialect those who taught him memory those who taught him to escape
the hypnotic.

The book lay on her lap. She realized that for more than five minutes she had been looking at the porousness of the paper,
the crease at the corner of page 17 which someone had folded over as a mark. She brushed her hand over its skin. A scurry in
her mind like a mouse in the ceiling, a moth on the night window. She looked down the hall, though there was no one else
living there now, no one except the English patient and herself in the Villa San Girolamo. She had enough vegetables planted
in the bombed-out orchard above the house for them to survive, a man coming now and then from the town with whom she
would trade soap and sheets and whatever there was left in this war hospital for other essentials. Some beans, some meats. The
man had left her two bottles of wine, and each night after she had lain with the Englishman and he was asleep, she would
ceremoniously pour herself a small beaker and carry it back to the night table just outside the three-quarter-closed door and sip
away further into whatever book she was reading.

So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms,
missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from
a mural at night.

The villa that she and the Englishman inhabited now was much like that. Some rooms could not be entered because of
rubble. One bomb crater allowed moon and rain into the library downstairs—where there was in one corner a permanently
soaked armchair.

She was not concerned about the Englishman as far as the gaps in plot were concerned. She gave no summary of the missing
chapters. She simply brought out the book and said “page ninety-six” or “page one hundred and eleven.” That was the only
locator. She lifted both of his hands to her face and smelled them—the odour of sickness still in them.

Your hands are getting rough, he said.

The weeds and thistles and digging.

Be careful. I warned you about the dangers.

I know.

Then she began to read.

Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog’s paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would
lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest
smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog’s paw was a wonder: the smell
of it never suggested dirt. It’s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through
cyclamen—a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.

A scurry in the ceiling like a mouse, and she looked up from the book again.

They unwrapped the mask of herbs from his face. The day of the eclipse. They were waiting for it. Where was he? What
civilisation was this that understood the predictions of weather and light? El Ahmar or El Abyadd, for they must be one of the
northwest desert tribes. Those who could catch a man out of the sky, who covered his face with a mask of oasis reeds knitted
together. He had now a bearing of grass. His favourite garden in the world had been the grass garden at Kew, the colours so
delicate and various, like levels of ash on a hill.

He gazed onto the landscape under the eclipse. They had taught him by now to raise his arms and drag strength into his body
from the universe, the way the desert pulled down planes. He was carried in a palanquin of felt and branch. He saw the moving
veins of flamingos across his sight in the half-darkness of the covered sun.

Always there were ointments, or darkness, against his skin. One night he heard what seemed to be wind chimes high in the
air, and after a while it stopped and he fell asleep with a hunger for it, that noise like the slowed-down sound from the throat of
a bird, perhaps flamingo, or a desert fox, which one of the men kept in a sewn-half-closed pocket in his burnoose.

The next day he heard snatches of the glassy sound as he lay once more covered in cloth. A noise out of the darkness. At
twilight the felt was unwrapped and he saw a man’s head on a table moving towards him, then realized the man wore a giant
yoke from which hung hundreds of small bottles on different lengths of string and wire. Moving as if part of a glass curtain, his


body enveloped within that sphere.

The figure resembled most of all those drawings of archangels he had tried to copy as a schoolboy, never solving how one
body could have space for the muscles of such wings. The man moved with a long, slow gait, so smoothly there was hardly a
tilt in the bottles. A wave of glass, an archangel, all the ointments within the bottles warmed from the sun, so when they were
rubbed onto skin they seemed to have been heated especially for a wound. Behind him was translated light—blues and other
colours shivering in the haze and sand. The faint glass noise and the diverse colours and the regal walk and his face like a lean
dark gun.

Up close the glass was rough and sandblasted, glass that had lost its civilisation. Each bottle had a minute cork the man
plucked out with his teeth and kept in his lips while mixing one bottle’s contents with another’s, a second cork also in his teeth.
He stood over the supine burned body with his wings, sank two sticks deep into the sand and then moved away free of the six-
foot yoke, which balanced now within the crutches of the two sticks. He stepped out from under his shop. He sank to his knees
and came towards the burned pilot and put his cold hands on his neck and held them there.

He was known to everyone along the camel route from the Sudan north to Giza, the Forty Days Road. He met the caravans,
traded spice and liquid, and moved between oases and water camps. He walked through sandstorms with this coat of bottles,
his ears plugged with two other small corks so he seemed a vessel to himself, this merchant doctor, this king of oils and
perfumes and panaceas, this baptist. He would enter a camp and set up the curtain of bottles in front of whoever was sick.

He crouched by the burned man. He made a skin cup with the soles of his feet and leaned back to pluck, without even
looking, certain bottles. With the uncorking of each tiny bottle the perfumes fell out. There was an odour of the sea. The smell
of rust. Indigo. Ink. River-mud arrow-wood formaldehyde paraffin ether. The tide of airs chaotic. There were screams of
camels in the distance as they picked up the scents. He began to rub green-black paste onto the rib cage. It was ground peacock
bone, bartered for in a medina to the west or the south—the most potent healer of skin.

Between the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for
a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room
had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds. There was a sofa, a piano
covered in a grey sheet, the head of a stuffed bear and high walls of books. The shelves nearest the torn wall bowed with the
rain, which had doubled the weight of the books. Lightning came into the room too, again and again, falling across the covered
piano and carpet.

At the far end were French doors that were boarded up. If they had been open she could have walked from the library to the
loggia, then down thirty-six penitent steps past the chapel towards what had been an ancient meadow, scarred now by
phosphorus bombs and explosions. The German army had mined many of the houses they retreated from, so most rooms not
needed, like this one, had been sealed for safety, the doors hammered into their frames.

She knew these dangers when she slid into the room, walking into its afternoon darkness. She stood conscious suddenly of
her weight on the wooden floor, thinking it was probably enough to trigger whatever mechanism was there. Her feet in dust.
The only light poured through the jagged mortar circle that looked onto the sky.

With a crack of separation, as if it were being dismantled from one single unit, she pulled out The Last of the Mohicans and
even in this half-light was cheered by the aquamarine sky and lake on the cover illustration, the Indian in the foreground. And
then, as if there were someone in the room who was not to be disturbed, she walked backwards, stepping on her own
footprints, for safety, but also as part of a private game, so it would seem from the steps that she had entered the room and then
the corporeal body had disappeared. She closed the door and replaced the seal of warning.

She sat in the window alcove in the English patient’s room, the painted walls on one side of her, the valley on the other. She
opened the book. The pages were joined together in a stiff wave. She felt like Crusoe finding a drowned book that had washed
up and dried itself on the shore. A Narrative of 1757. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. As in all of the best books, there was the
important page with the list of illustrations, a line of text for each of them.

She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that
stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by
unremembered dreams.

Their Italian hill town, sentinel to the northwest route, had been besieged for more than a month, the barrage focusing upon
the two villas and the monastery surrounded by apple and plum orchards. There was the Villa Medici, where the generals lived.
Just above it the Villa San Girolamo, previously a nunnery, whose castlelike battlements had made it the last stronghold of the
German army. It had housed a hundred troops. As the hill town began to be torn apart like a battleship at sea, by fire shells, the
troops moved from the barrack tents in the orchard into the now crowded bedrooms of the old nunnery. Sections of the chapel
were blown up. Parts of the top storey of the villa crumbled under explosions. When the Allies finally took over the building
and made it a hospital, the steps leading to the third level were sealed off, though a section of chimney and roof survived.

She and the Englishman had insisted on remaining behind when the other nurses and patients moved to a safer location in
the south. During this time they were very cold, without electricity. Some rooms faced onto the valley with no walls at all. She
would open a door and see just a sodden bed huddled against a corner, covered with leaves. Doors opened into landscape.
Some rooms had become an open aviary.

The staircase had lost its lower steps during the fire that was set before the soldiers left. She had gone into the library,
removed twenty books and nailed them to the floor and then onto each other, in this way rebuilding the two lowest steps. Most
of the chairs had been used for fires. The armchair in the library was left there because it was always wet, drenched by evening
storms that came in through the mortar hole. Whatever was wet escaped burning during that April of 1945. There were few
beds left. She herself preferred to be nomadic in the house with her pallet or hammock, sleeping sometimes in the English
patient’s room, sometimes in the hall, depending on temperature or wind or light. In the morning she rolled up her mattress and
tied it into a wheel with string. Now it was warmer and she was opening more rooms, airing the dark reaches, letting sunlight


dry all the dampness. Some nights she opened doors and slept in rooms that had walls missing. She lay on the pallet on the
very edge of the room, facing the drifting landscape of stars, moving clouds, wakened by the growl of thunder and lightning.
She was twenty years old and mad and unconcerned with safety during this time, having no qualms about the dangers of the
possibly mined library or the thunder that startled her in the night. She was restless after the cold months, when she had been
limited to dark, protected spaces. She entered rooms that had been soiled by soldiers, rooms whose furniture had been burned
within them. She cleared out leaves and shit and urine and charred tables. She was living like a vagrant, while elsewhere the
English patient reposed in his bed like a king.

From outside, the place seemed devastated. An outdoor staircase disappeared in midair, its railing hanging off. Their life was
foraging and tentative safety. They used only essential candlelight at night because of the brigands who annihilated everything
they came across. They were protected by the simple fact that the villa seemed a ruin. But she felt safe here, half adult and half
child. Coming out of what had happened to her during the war, she drew her own few rules to herself. She would not be
ordered again or carry out duties for the greater good. She would care only for the burned patient. She would read to him and
bathe him and give him his doses of morphine—her only communication was with him.

She worked in the garden and orchard. She carried the six-foot crucifix from the bombed chapel and used it to build a
scarecrow above her seedbed, hanging empty sardine cans from it which clattered and clanked whenever the wind lifted.
Within the villa she would step from rubble to a candlelit alcove where there was her neatly packed suitcase, which held little
besides some letters, a few rolled-up clothes, a metal box of medical supplies. She had cleared just small sections of the villa,
and all this she could burn down if she wished.

She lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on
her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she also breathes in light.

She moves backwards a few feet and with a piece of white chalk draws a rectangle onto the wood floor. Then continues
backwards, drawing more rectangles, so there is a pyramid of them, single then double then single, her left hand braced flat on
the floor, her head down, serious. She moves farther and farther away from the light. Till she leans back onto her heels and sits
crouching.

She drops the chalk into the pocket of her dress. She stands and pulls up the looseness of her skirt and ties it around her
waist. She pulls from another pocket a piece of metal and flings it out in front of her so it falls just beyond the farthest square.

She leaps forward, her legs smashing down, her shadow behind her curling into the depth of the hall. She is very quick, her
tennis shoes skidding on the numbers she has drawn into each rectangle, one foot landing, then two feet, then one again, until
she reaches the last square.

She bends down and picks up the piece of metal, pauses in that position, motionless, her skirt still tucked up above her
thighs, hands hanging down loose, breathing hard. She takes a gulp of air and blows out the candle.

Now she is in darkness. Just a smell of smoke.

She leaps up and in midair turns so she lands facing the other way, then skips forward even wilder now down the black hall,
still landing on squares she knows are there, her tennis shoes banging and slamming onto the dark floor—so the sound echoes
out into the far reaches of the deserted Italian villa, out towards the moon and the scar of a ravine that half circles the building.

Sometimes at night the burned man hears a faint shudder in the building. He turns up his hearing aid to draw in a banging
noise he still cannot interpret or place.

She picks up the notebook that lies on the small table beside his bed. It is the book he brought with him through the fire— a
copy of The Histories by Herodotus that he has added to, cutting and gluing in pages from other books or writing in his own
observations—so they all are cradled within the text of

Herodotus.

She begins to read his small gnarled handwriting.

There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the
africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The aim, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened
are/or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.

There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves
anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days —burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis,
which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob—a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a
thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic.
Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The
khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for “fifty,” blooming for fifty days—the ninth
plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance.

There is also the ———, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it.

And the nafliat—a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen —a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as “that
which plucks the fowls.” The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, “black wind.” The Samiel from
Turkey, “poison and wind,” used often in battle. As well as the other “poison winds,” the simoom, of North Africa, and the
solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness.

Other, private winds.

Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue
heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks
of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the “sea of darkness.” Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as
Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. “Blood rains were widely reported


in Portugal and Spain in 1901.”

There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh
in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of
various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was “so enraged by this evil wind that they
declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.”

Dust storms in three shapes. The whirl. The column. The sheet. In the first the horizon is lost. In the second you are
surrounded by “waltzing Ginns.” The third, the sheet, is “copper-tinted. Nature seems to be on fire.”

She looks up from the book and sees his eyes on her. He begins to talk across the darkness.

The Bedouin were keeping me alive for a reason. I was useful, you see. Someone there had assumed I had a skill when my
plane crashed in the desert. I am a man who can recognize an unnamed town by its skeletal shape on a map. I have always had
information like a sea in me. I am a person who if left alone in someone’s home walks to the bookcase, pulls down a volume
and inhales it. So history enters us. I knew maps of the sea floor, maps that depict weaknesses in the shield of the earth, charts
painted on skin that contain the various routes of the Crusades.

So I knew their place before I crashed among them, knew when Alexander had traversed it in an earlier age, for this cause or
that greed. I knew the customs of nomads besotted by silk or wells. One tribe dyed a whole valley floor, blackening it to
increase convection and thereby the possibility of rainfall, and built high structures to pierce the belly of a cloud. There were
some tribes who held up their open palm against the beginnings of wind. Who believed that if this was done at the right
moment they could deflect a storm into an adjacent sphere of the desert, towards another, less loved tribe. There were continual
drownings, tribes suddenly made historical with sand across their gasp.

In the desert it is easy to lose a sense of demarcation. When I came out of the air and crashed into the desert, into those
troughs of yellow, all I kept thinking was, I must build a raft... I must build a raft.

And here, though I was in the dry sands, I knew I was among water people.

In Tassili I have seen rock engravings from a time when the Sahara people hunted water horses from reed boats. In Wadi
Sura I saw caves whose walls were covered with paintings of swimmers. Here there had been a lake. I could draw its shape on
a wall for them. I could lead them to its edge, six thousand years ago.

Ask a mariner what is the oldest known sail, and he will describe a trapezoidal one hung from the mast of a reed boat that
can be seen in rock drawings in Nubia. Pre-dynastic. Harpoons are still found in the desert. These were water people. Even
today caravans look like a river. Still, today it is water who is the stranger here. Water is the exile, carried back in cans and
flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.

When I was lost among them, unsure of where I was, all I needed was the name of a small ridge, a local custom, a cell of this
historical animal, and the map of the world would slide into place.

What did most of us know of such parts of Africa? The armies of the Nile moved back and forth—a battlefield eight hundred
miles deep into the desert. Whippet tanks, Blenheim medium-range bombers. Gladiator biplane fighters. Eight thousand men.
But who was the enemy? Who were the allies of this place—the fertile lands of Cyrenaica, the salt marshes of El Agheila? All
of Europe were fighting their wars in North Africa, in Sidi Rezegh, in Baguoh.

He travelled on a skid behind the Bedouin for five days in darkness, the hood over his body. He lay within this oil-doused
cloth. Then suddenly the temperature fell. They had reached the valley within the red high canyon walls, joining the rest of the
desert’s water tribe that spilled and slid over sand and stones, their blue robes shifting like a spray of milk or a wing. They
lifted the soft cloth off him, off the suck of his body. He was within the larger womb of the canyon. The buzzards high above
them slipping down a thousand years into this crack of stone where they camped.

In the morning they took him to the far reach of the siq. They were talking loudly around him now. The dialect suddenly
clarifying. He was here because of the buried guns.

He was carried towards something, his blindfolded face looking straight ahead, and his hand made to reach out a yard or so.
After days of travel, to move this one yard. To lean towards and touch something with a purpose, his arm still held, his palm
facing down and open. He touched the Sten barrel and the hand let go of him. A pause among the voices. He was there to
translate the guns.

“Twelve-millimetre Breda machine gun. From Italy.”

He pulled back the bolt, inserted his finger to find no bullet, pushed it back and pulled the trigger. Puht. “Famous gun,” he
muttered. He was moved forward again.

“French seven-point-five-millimetre Chattelerault. Light machine gun. Nineteen twenty-four.”

“German seven-point-nine-millimetre MG-Fifteen air service.

He was brought to each of the guns. The weapons seemed to be from different time periods and from many countries, a
museum in the desert. He brushed the contours of the stock and magazine or fingered the sight. He spoke out the gun’s name,
then was carried to another gun. Eight weapons formally handed to him. He called the names out loud, speaking in French and
then the tribe’s own language. But what did that matter to them? Perhaps they needed not the name but to know that he knew
what the gun was.

He was held by the wrist again and his hand sunk into a box of cartridges. In another box to the right were more shells,
seven-millimetre shells this time. Then others.

When he was a child he had grown up with an aunt, and on the grass of her lawn she had scattered a deck of cards face down
and taught him the game of Pelmanism. Each player allowed to turn up two cards and, eventually, through memory pairing
them off. This had been in another landscape, of trout streams, birdcalls that he could recognize from a halting fragment. A
fully named world. Now, with his face blindfolded in a mask of grass fibres, he picked up a shell and moved with his carriers,
guiding them towards a gun, inserted the bullet, bolted it, and holding it up in the air fired. The noise cracking crazily down the



canyon walls. “For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.” A man thought to be sullen and mad had
written that sentence down in an English hospital. And he, now in this desert, was sane, with clear thought, picking up the
cards, bringing them together with ease, his grin flung out to his aunt, and firing each successful combination into the air, and
gradually the unseen men around him replied to each rifle shot with a cheer. He would turn to face one direction, then move
back to the Breda this time on his strange human palanquin, followed by a man with a knife who carved a parallel code on
shell box and gun stock. He thrived on it—the movement and the cheering after the solitude. This was payment with his skill
for the men who had saved him for such a purpose.

There are villages he will travel into wit

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II

In Near Ruins

THE MAN WITH BANDAGED HANDS had been in the military hospital in Rome for more than four months when by accident he
heard about the burned patient and the nurse, heard her name. He turned from the doorway and walked back into the clutch of
doctors he had just passed, to discover where she was. He had been recuperating there for a long time, and they knew him as an
evasive man. But now he spoke to them, asking about the name, and startled them. During all that time he had never spoken,
communicating by signals and grimaces, now and then a grin. He had revealed nothing, not even his name, just wrote out his
serial number, which showed he was with the Allies.

His status had been double-checked, and confirmed in messages from London. There was the cluster of known scars on him.
So the doctors had come back to him, nodded at the bandages on him. A celebrity, after all, wanting silence. A war hero.

That was how he felt safest. Revealing nothing. Whether they came at him with tenderness or subterfuge or knives. For more
than four months he had not said a word. He was a large animal in their presence, in near ruins when he was brought in and
given regular doses of morphine for the pain in his hands. He would sit in an armchair in the darkness, watching the tide of
movement among patients and nurses in and out of the wards and stockrooms.

But now, walking past the group of doctors in the hall, he heard the woman’s name, and he slowed his pace and turned and
came up to them and asked specifically which hospital she was working in. They told him that it was in an old nunnery, taken
over by the Germans, then converted into a hospital after the Allies had laid siege to it. In the hills north of Florence. Most of it
torn apart by bombing. Unsafe. It had been just a temporary field hospital. But the nurse and the patient had refused to leave.

Why didn’t you force the two of them down?

She claimed he was too ill to be moved. We could have brought him out safely, of course, but nowadays there is no time to
argue. She was in rough shape herself.

Is she injured?

No. Partial shell shock probably. She should have been sent home. The trouble is, the war here is over. You cannot make
anyone do anything anymore. Patients are walking out of hospitals. Troops are going AWOL before they get sent back home.

Which villa? he asked.


It’s one they say has a ghost in the garden. San Girolamo. Well, she’s got her own ghost, a burned patient. There is a face,
but it is unrecognizable. The nerves all gone. You can pass a match across his face and there is no expression. The face is
asleep.

Who is he? he asked.

We don’t know his name.

He won’t talk?

The clutch of doctors laughed. No, he talks, he talks all the time, he just doesn’t know who he is.

Where did he come from?

The Bedouin brought him into Siwa Oasis. Then he was in Pisa for a while, then... One of the Arabs is probably wearing his
name tag. He will probably sell it and we’ll get it one day, or perhaps they will never sell it. These are great charms. All pilots
who fall into the desert—none of them come back with identification. Now he’s holed up in a Tuscan villa and the girl won’t
leave him. Simply refuses. The Allies housed a hundred patients there. Before that the Germans held it with a small army, their
last stronghold. Some rooms are painted, each room has a different season. Outside the villa is a gorge. All this is about twenty
miles from Florence, in the hills. You will need a pass, of course. We can probably get someone to drive you up. It is still
terrible out there. Dead cattle. Horses shot dead, half eaten. People hanging upside down from bridges. The last vices of war.
Completely unsafe. The sappers haven’t gone in there yet to clear it. The Germans retreated burying and installing mines as
they went. A terrible place for a hospital. The smell of the dead is the worst. We need a good snowfall to clean up this country.
We need ravens.

Thank you.

He walked out of the hospital into the sun, into open air for the first time in months, out of the green-lit rooms that lay like
glass in his mind. He stood there breathing everything in, the hurry of everyone. First, he thought, I need shoes with rubber on
the bottom. I need gelato.

He found it difficult to fall asleep on the train, shaking from side to side. The others in the compartment smoking. His temple
banging against the window frame. Everyone was in dark clothes, and the carriage seemed to be on fire with all the lit
cigarettes. He noticed that whenever the train passed a cemetery the travellers around him crossed themselves. She’s in rough
shape herself.

Gelato for tonsils, he remembered. Accompanying a girl and her father to have her tonsils out. She had taken one look at the
ward full of other children and simply refused. This, the most adaptable and genial of children, suddenly turned into a stone of
refusal, adamant. No one was ripping anything out of her throat though the wisdom of the day advised it. She would live with
it in, whatever “it” looked like. He still had no idea what a tonsil was.

They never touched my head, he thought, that was strange. The worst times were when he began to imagine what they would
have done next, cut next. At those times he always thought of his head.

A scurry in the ceiling like a mouse.

He stood with his valise at the far end of the hall. He put the bag down and waved across the darkness and the intermittent
pools of candlelight. There was no clatter of footsteps as he walked towards her, not a sound on the floor, and that surprised
her, was somehow familiar and comforting to her, that he could approach this privacy of hers and the English patient’s without
loudness.

As he passed the lamps in the long hall they flung his shadow forward ahead of him. She turned up the wick on the oil lamp
so it enlarged the diameter of light around her. She sat very still, the book on her lap, as he came up to her and then crouched
beside her like an uncle.

“Tell me what a tonsil is.”

Her eyes staring at him.

“I keep remembering how you stormed out of the hospital followed by two grown men.”

She nodded.

“Is your patient in there? Can I go in?”

She shook her head, kept shaking it until he spoke again.

“I’ll see him tomorrow, then. Just tell me where to go. I don’t need sheets. Is there a kitchen? Such a strange journey I took
in order to find you.”

When he had gone along the hall she came back to the table and sat down, trembling. Needing this table, this half-finished
book in order to collect herself. A man she knew had come all the way by train and walked the four miles uphill from the
village and along the hall to this table just to see her. After a few minutes she walked into the Englishman’s room and stood
there looking down on him. Moonlight across the foliage on the walls. This was the only light that made the trompe 1’oeil
seem convincing. She could pluck that flower and pin it onto her dress.

The man named Caravaggio pushes open all the windows in the room so he can hear the noises of the night. He undresses,
rubs his palms gently over his neck and for a while lies down on the unmade bed. The noise of the trees, the breaking of moon
into silver fish bouncing off the leaves of asters outside. The moon is on him like skin, a sheaf of water. An hour later he is on
the roof of the villa. Up on the peak he is aware of the shelled sections along the slope of roofs, the two acres of destroyed
gardens and orchards that neighbour the villa. He looks over where they are in Italy.

In the morning by the fountain they talk tentatively.

“Now you are in Italy you should find out more about Verdi.”

“What?” She looks up from the bedding that she is washing out in the fountain.


He reminds her. “You told me once you were in love with him.”

Hana bows her head, embarrassed.

Caravaggio walks around, looking at the building for the first time, peering down from the loggia into the garden.

“Yes, you used to love him. You used to drive us all mad with your new information about Giuseppe. What a man! The best
in every way, you’d say. We all had to agree with you, the cocky sixteen-year-old.”

“I wonder what happened to her.” She spreads the washed sheet over the rim of the fountain.

“You were someone with a dangerous will.”

She walks over the paved stones, grass in the cracks. He watches her black-stockinged feet, the thin brown dress. She leans
over the balustrade.

“I think I did come here, I have to admit, something at the back of my mind made me, for Verdi. And then of course you had
left and my dad had left for the war.... Look at the hawks. They are here every morning. Everything else is damaged and in
pieces here. The only running water in this whole villa is in this fountain. The Allies dismantled water pipes when they left.
They thought that would make me leave.”

“You should have. They still have to clear this region. There are unexploded bombs all over the place.”

She comes up to him and puts her fingers on his mouth.

“I’m glad to see you, Caravaggio. No one else. Don’t say you have come here to try and persuade me to leave.”

“I want to find a small bar with a Wurlitzer and drink without a fucking bomb going off. Listen to Frank Sinatra singing. We
have to get some music,” he says. “Good for your patient.”

“He’s still in Africa.”

He is watching her, waiting for her to say more, but there is nothing more about the English patient to be said. He mutters.
“Some of the English love Africa. A part of their brain reflects the desert precisely. So they’re not foreigners there.”

He sees her head nod slightly. A lean face with hair cut short, without the mask and mystery of her long hair. If anything, she
seems calm in this universe of hers. The fountain gurgling in the background, the hawks, the ruined garden of the villa.

Maybe this is the way to come out of a war, he thinks. A burned man to care for, some sheets to wash in a fountain, a room
painted like a garden. As if all that remains is a capsule from the past, long before Verdi, the Medicis considering a balustrade
or window, holding up a candle at night in the presence of an invited architect—the best architect in the fifteenth century—and
requesting something more satisfying to frame that vista.

“If you are staying,” she says, “we are going to need more food. I have planted vegetables, we have a sack of beans, but we
need some chickens.” She is looking at Caravaggio, knowing his skills from the past, not quite saying it.

“I lost my nerve,” he says.

“I’ll come with you, then,” Hana offers. “We’ll do it together. You can teach me to steal, show me what to do.”

“You don’t understand. I lost my nerve.”

“Why?”

“I was caught. They nearly chopped off my rucking hands.”

At night sometimes, when the English patient is asleep or even after she has read alone outside his door for a while, she goes
looking for Caravaggio. He will be in the garden lying along the stone rim of the fountain looking up at stars, or she will come
across him on a lower terrace. In this early-summer weather he finds it difficult to stay indoors at night. Most of the time he is
on the roof beside the broken chimney, but he slips down silently when he sees her figure cross the terrace looking for him.
She will find him near the headless statue of a count, upon whose stub of neck one of the local cats likes to sit, solemn and
drooling when humans appear. She is always made to feel that she is the one who has found him, this man who knows
darkness, who when drunk used to claim he was brought up by a family of owls.

Two of them on a promontory, Florence and her lights in the distance. Sometimes he seems frantic to her, or he will be too
calm. In daylight she notices better how he moves, notices the stiffened arms above the bandaged hands, how his whole body
turns instead of just the neck when she points to something farther up the hill. But she has said nothing about these things to
him.

“My patient thinks peacock bone ground up is a great healer.”

He looks up into the night sky. “Yes.”

“Were you a spy then?”

“Not quite.”

He feels more comfortable, more disguised from her in the dark garden, a flicker of the lamp from the patient’s room looking
down. “At times we were sent in to steal. Here I was, an Italian and a thief. They couldn’t believe their luck, they were falling
over themselves to use me. There were about four or five of us. I did well for some time. Then I was accidentally
photographed. Can you imagine that?

“I was in a tuxedo, a monkey suit, in order to get into this gathering, a party, to steal some papers. Really I was still a thief.
No great patriot. No great hero. They had just made my skills official. But one of the women had brought a camera and was
snapping at the German officers, and I was caught in mid-step, walking across the ballroom. In mid-step, the beginning of the
shutter’s noise making me jerk my head towards it. So suddenly everything in the future was dangerous. Some general’s
girlfriend.

“All photographs taken during the war were processed officially in government labs, checked by the Gestapo, and so there I
would be, obviously not part of any list, to be filed away by an official when the film went to the Milan laboratory. So it meant
having to try and steal that film back somehow.”

She looks in on the English patient, whose sleeping body is probably miles away in the desert, being healed by a man who
continues to dip his fingers into the bowl made with the joined soles of his feet, leaning forward, pressing the dark paste
against the burned face. She imagines the weight of the hand on her own cheek.


She walks down the hall and climbs into her hammock, giving it a swing as she leaves the ground.

Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed
with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger
for her, her body full of stories and situations. Caravag-gio has for instance given her something. His motive, a drama, and a
stolen image.

He leaves the party in a car. It crunches over the slowly curving gravel path leading out of the grounds, the automobile
purring, serene as ink within the summer night. For the rest of the evening during the Villa Cosima gathering he had been
looking at the photographer, spinning his body away whenever she lifted the camera to photograph in his direction. Now that
he knows of its existence he can avoid it. He moves into the range of her dialogue, her name is Anna, mistress to an officer,
who will be staying here in the villa for the night and then in the morning will travel north through Tuscany. The death of the
woman or the woman’s sudden disappearance will only arouse suspicion. Nowadays anything out of the ordinary is
investigated.

Four hours later, he runs over the grass in his socks, his shadow curled under him, painted by the moon. He stops at the
gravel path and moves slowly over the grit. He looks up at the Villa Cosima, at the square moons of window. A palace of war-
women.

A car beam—like something sprayed out of a hose—lights up the room he is in, and he pauses once again in mid-step,
seeing that same woman’s eyes on him, a man moving on top of her, his fingers in her blonde hair. And she has seen, he
knows, even though now he is naked, the same man she photographed earlier in the crowded party, for by accident he stands
the same way now, half turned in surprise at the light that reveals his body in the darkness. The car lights sweep up into a
corner of the room and disappear.

Then there is blackness. He doesn’t know whether to move, whether she will whisper to the man fucking her about the other
person in the room. A naked thief. A naked assassin. Should he move—his hands out to break a neck—towards the couple on
the bed?

He hears the man’s lovemaking continue, hears the silence of the woman—no whisper—hears her thinking, her eyes aimed
towards him in the darkness. The word should be think-ering. Caravaggio’s mind slips into this consideration, another syllable
to suggest collecting a thought as one tinkers with a half-completed bicycle. Words are tricky things, a friend of his has told
him, they’re much more tricky than violins. His mind recalls the woman’s blonde hair, the black ribbon in it.

He hears the car turning and waits for another moment of light. The face that emerges out of the dark is still an arrow upon
him. The light moves from her face down onto the body of the general, over the carpet, and then touches and slides over
Caravaggio once more. He can no longer see her. He shakes his head, then mimes the cutting of his throat. The camera is in his
hands for her to understand. Then he is in darkness again. He hears a moan of pleasure now from her towards her lover, and he
is aware it is her agreement with him. No words, no hint of irony, just a contract with him, the morse of understanding, so he
knows he can now move safely to the verandah and drop out into the night.

Finding her room had been more difficult. He had entered the villa and silently passed the half-lit seventeenth-century
murals along the corridors. Somewhere there were bedrooms like dark pockets in a gold suit. The only way he could get past
guards was to be revealed as an innocent. He had stripped completely and left his clothes in a flower bed.

He ambles naked up the stairs to the second floor, where the guards are, bending down to laugh at some privacy, so his face
is almost at his hip, nudging the guards about his evening’s invitation, alfresco, was that it? Or seduction a cappella~?

One long hall on the third floor. A guard by the stair and one at the far end twenty yards away, too many yards away. So a
long theatrical walk, and Caravaggio now having to perform it, watched with quiet suspicion and scornfully by the two
bookended sentries, the ass-and-cock walk, pausing at a section of mural to peer at a painted donkey in a grove. He leans his
head on the wall, almost falling asleep, then walks again, stumbles and immediately pulls himself together into a military gait.
His stray left hand waves to the ceiling of cherubs bum-naked as he is, a salute from a thief, a brief waltz while the mural scene
drifts haphazardly past him, castles, black-and-white duomos, uplifted saints on this Tuesday during the war, in order to save
his disguise and his life. Caravaggio is out on the tiles looking for a photograph of himself.

He pats his bare chest as if looking for his pass, grabs his penis and pretends to use it as a key to let him into the room that is
being guarded. Laughing, he staggers back, peeved at his woeful failure, and slips into the next room humming.

He opens the window and steps out onto the verandah. A dark, beautiful night. Then he climbs off it and swings onto the
verandah one level below. Only now can he enter the room of Anna and her general. Nothing more than a perfume in their
midst. Printless foot. Shadowless. The story he told someone’s child years ago about the person who searched for his
shadow—as he is now looking for this image of himself on a piece of film.

In the room he is immediately aware of the beginnings of sexual movement. His hands within her clothing thrown onto chair
backs, dropped upon the floor. He lies down and rolls across the carpet in order to feel anything hard like a camera, touching
the skin of the room. He rolls in silence in the shape of fans, finding nothing. There is not even a grain of light.

He gets to his feet and sways his arms out slowly, touches a breast of marble. His hand moves along a stone hand—he
understands the way the woman thinks now—off which the camera hangs with its sling. Then he hears the vehicle and
simultaneously as he turns is seen by the woman in the sudden spray of car light.

Caravaggio watches Hana, who sits across from him looking into his eyes, trying to read him, trying to figure the flow of
thought the way his wife used to do. He watches her sniffing him out, searching for the trace. He buries it and looks back at
her, knowing his eyes are faultless, clear as any river, unimpeachable as a landscape. People, he knows, get lost in them, and he
is able to hide well. But the girl watches him quizzically, tilting her head in a question as a dog would when spoken to in a tone
or pitch that is not human. She sits across from him in front of the dark, blood-red walls, whose colour he doesn’t like, and in
her black hair and with that look, slim, tanned olive from all the light in this country, she reminds him of his wife.


Nowadays he doesn’t think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any
aspect of her, the weight of her wrist on his heart during the night.

He sits with his hands below the table, watching the girl eat. He still prefers to eat alone, though he always sits with Hana
during meals. Vanity, he thinks. Mortal vanity. She has seen him from a window eating with his hands as he sits on one of the
thirty-six steps by the chapel, not a fork or a knife in sight, as if he were learning to eat like someone from the East. In his
greying stubble-beard, in his dark jacket, she sees the Italian finally in him. She notices this more and more.

He watches her darkness against the brown-and-red walls, her skin, her cropped dark hair. He had known her and her father
in Toronto before the war. Then he had been a thief, a married man, slipped through his chosen world with a lazy confidence,
brilliant in deceit against the rich, or charm towards his wife Giannetta or with this young daughter of his friend.

But now there is hardly a world around them and they are forced back on themselves. During these days in the hill town near
Florence, indoors during the days of rain, daydreaming in the one soft chair in the kitchen or on the bed or on the roof, he has
no plots to set in motion, is interested only in Hana. And it seems she has chained herself to the dying man upstairs.

During meals he sits opposite this girl and watches her eat.

Half a year earlier, from a window at the end of the long hall in Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa, Hana had been able to see a
white lion. It stood alone on top of the battlements, linked by colour to the white marble of the Duomo and the Camposanto,
though its roughness and naive form seemed part of another era. Like some gift from the past that had to be accepted. Yet she
accepted it most of all among the things surrounding this hospital. At midnight she would look through the window and know
it stood within the curfew blackout and that it would emerge like her into the dawn shift. She would look up at five or five-
thirty and then at six to see its silhouette and growing detail. Every night it was her sentinel while she moved among patients.
Even through the shelling the army had left it there, much more concerned about the rest of the fabulous compound—with its
mad logic of a tower leaning like a person in shell shock.

Their hospital buildings lay in old monastery grounds. The topiary carved for thousands of years by too careful monks was
no longer bound within recognizable animal forms, and during the day nurses wheeled patients among the lost shapes. It
seemed that only white stone remained permanent.

Nurses too became shell-shocked from the dying around them. Or from something as small as a letter. They would carry a
severed arm down a hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in
nothing, trusted nothing. They broke the way a man dismantling a mine broke the second his geography exploded. The way
Hana broke in Santa Chiara Hospital when an official walked down the space between a hundred beds and gave her a letter that
told her of the death of her father.

A white lion.

It was sometime after this that she had come across the English patient—someone who looked like a burned animal, taut and
dark, a pool for her. And now, months later, he is her last patient in the Villa San Girolamo, their war over, both of them
refusing to return with the others to the safety of the Pisa hospitals. All the coastal ports, such as Sorrento and Marina di Pisa,
are now filled with North American and British troops waiting to be sent home. But she washed her uniform, folded it and
returned it to the departing nurses. The war is not over everywhere, she was told. The war is over. This war is over. The war
here. She was told it would be like desertion. This is not desertion. I will stay here. She was warned of the uncleared mines,
lack of water and food. She came upstairs to the burned man, the English patient, and told him she would stay as well.

He said nothing, unable even to turn his head towards her, but his fingers slipped into her white hand, and when she bent
forward to him he put his dark fingers into her hair and felt it cool within the valley of his fingers.

How old are you?

Twenty.

There was a duke, he said, who when he was dying wanted to be carried halfway up the tower in Pisa so he could die looking
out into the middle distance.

A friend of my father’s wanted to die while Shanghai-dancing. I don’t know what it is. He had just heard of it himself.

What does your father do?

He is ... he is in the war.

You’re in the war too.

She does not know anything about him. Even after a month or so of caring for him and allotting him the needles of morphine.
There was shyness at first within both of them, made more evident by the fact that they were now alone. Then it was
suddenly overcome. The patients and doctors and nurses and equipment and sheets and towels—all went back down the hill
into Florence and then to Pisa. She had salted away codeine tablets, as well as the morphine. She watched the departures, the
line of trucks. Good-bye, then. She waved from his window, bringing the shutters to a close.

Behind the villa a rock wall rose higher than the house. To the west of the building was a long enclosed garden, and twenty
miles away was the carpet of the city of Florence, which often disappeared under the mist of the valley. Rumour had it one of
the generals living in the old Medici villa next door had eaten a nightingale.

The Villa San Girolamo, built to protect inhabitants from the flesh of the devil, had the look of a besieged fortress, the limbs
of most of the statues blown off during the first days of shelling. There seemed little demarcation between house and
landscape, between damaged building and the burned and shelled remnants of the earth. To Hana the wild gardens were like
further rooms. She worked along the edges of them aware always of unexploded mines. In one soil-rich area beside the house
she began to garden with a furious passion that could come only to someone who had grown up in a city. In spite of the burned
earth, in spite of the lack of water. Someday there would be a bower of limes, rooms of green light.

Caravaggio came into the kitchen to find Hana sitting hunched over the table. He could not see her face or her arms tucked
in under her body, only the naked back, the bare shoulders.


She was not still or asleep. With each shudder her head shook over the table.

Caravaggio stood there. Those who weep lose more energy than they lose during any other act. It was not yet dawn. Her face
against the darkness of the table wood.

“Hana,” he said, and she stilled herself as if she could be camouflaged by stillness. “Hana.”

She began to moan so the sound would be a barrier between them, a river across which she could not be reached.

He was uncertain at first about touching her in her nakedness, said “Hana,” and then lay his bandaged hand on her shoulder.
She did not stop shaking. The deepest sorrow, he thought. Where the only way to survive is to excavate everything.

She raised herself, her head down still, then stood up against him as if dragging herself away from the magnet of the table.

“Don't touch me if you're going to try and fuck me.”

The skin pale above her skirt, which was all she wore in this kitchen, as if she had risen from the bed, dressed partially and
come out here, the cool air from the hills entering the kitchen doorway and cloaking her. Her face was red and wet.

“Hana.”

“Do you understand?”

“Why do you adore him so much?”

“I love him.”

“You don't love him, you adore him.”

“Go away, Caravaggio. Please.”

“You've tied yourself to a corpse for some reason.”

“He is a saint. I think. A despairing saint. Are there such things? Our desire is to protect them.”

“He doesn't even care!”

“I can love him.”

“A twenty-year-old who throws herself out of the world to love a ghost!”

Caravaggio paused. “You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is
the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison— thinking you can cure them by sharing it—you will instead store it
within you. Those men in the desert were smarter than you. They assumed he could be useful. So they saved him, but when he
was no longer useful they left him.”

“Leave me alone.”

When she is solitary she will sit, aware of the nerve at her ankle, damp from the long grasses of the orchard. She peels a
plum from the orchard that she has found and carried in the dark cotton pocket of her dress. When she is solitary she tries to
imagine who might come along the old road under the green hood of the eighteen cypress trees.

As the Englishman wakes she bends over his body and places a third of the plum into his mouth. His open mouth holds it,
like water, the jaw not moving. He looks as if he will cry from this pleasure. She can sense the plum being swallowed.

He brings his hand up and wipes from his lip the last dribble, which his tongue cannot reach, and puts his finger in his mouth
to suck it. Let me tell you about plums, he says. When I was a boy...

After the first nights, after most of the beds had been burned for fuel against the cold, she had taken a dead man’s hammock
and begun to use it. She would bang spikes into whatever walls she desired, whichever room she wanted to wake in, floating
above all the filth and cordite and water on the floors, the rats that had started to appear coming down from the third storey.
Each night she climbed into the khaki ghostline of hammock she had taken from a dead soldier, someone who had died under
her care.

A pair of tennis shoes and a hammock. What she had taken from others in this war. She would wake under the slide of
moonlight on the ceiling, wrapped in an old shirt she always slept in, her dress hanging on a nail by the door. There was more
heat now, and she could sleep this way. Before, when it had been cold, they had had to burn things.

Her hammock and her shoes and her frock. She was secure in the miniature world she had built; the two other men seemed
distant planets, each in his own sphere of memory and solitude. Caravaggio, who had been her father’s gregarious friend in
Canada, in those days was capable of standing still and causing havoc within the caravan of women he seemed to give himself
over to. He now lay in his darkness. He had been a thief who refused to work with men, because he did not trust them, who
talked with men but who preferred talking to women and when he began talking to women was soon caught in the nets of
relationship. When she would sneak home in the early hours of the morning she would find him asleep on her father’s
armchair, exhausted from professional or personal robberies.

She thought about Caravaggio—some people you just had to embrace, in some way or another, had to bite into the muscle,
to remain sane in their company. You needed to grab their hair and clutch it like a drowner so they would pull you into their
midst. Otherwise they, walking casually down the street towards you, almost about to wave, would leap over a wall and be
gone for months. As an uncle he had been a disappearer.

Caravaggio would disturb you by simply enfolding you in his arms, his wings. With him you were embraced by character.
But now he lay in darkness, like her, in some outpost of the

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[table=500,#ffffff,#dddddd,1][tr][td] 2. 在濒临荒芜的废墟之中
卡拉瓦焦手上缠着绷带，已在罗马的军队医院里住了四个多月。他偶然听到了那个烧伤的病人和护士，知道了她的名字。他从门口转过身，走到刚刚经过的那群医生跟前，打听她在什么地方。他在那里修养了很长一段时间，他们知道他是一个不爱说话的人。但是现在他先对他们开了口，询问那名护士。他们着实吓了一跳。这么长的时间，他从不说话，只用手势和脸上表情与人沟通，不时还咧嘴一笑。他不发一言，甚至连他的名字都不告诉别人，只是写下了他的军号，表示他是盟军的成员。
他们对他进行调查，而伦敦发来的函件证实了他的身份，他满身都是伤疤，医生们回到他的眼前，冲着他身上的绷带点点头，原来他是个名人，难怪想图个安静。一个战斗英雄。
他觉得这样最安全，一言不发——不管他们是带着柔情、借口或是刀子来到他的跟前，四个多月以来，他没有说过一个字。在他们面前，他是一个巨兽，刚被送进来时几乎快要没命了，为了止住手上的疼痛不得不定时注射吗啡。他会坐在一个安乐椅中，在黑暗中望着川流不息的伤员和进出病房及贮藏室的护士。
但是现在，他在走廊上经过那群医生的身旁时，听到了那个女人的名字，于是他放慢了脚步，转过身来，只为了询问她在哪家医院工作。他们告诉他是在一个昔日的女修道院，那里曾被德军占领，盟军围困了那个地方，把它当成了一个医院。是在佛罗伦萨北部的山区。那里曾是一个临时的野战医院，几乎被炸毁了，很不安全，但是那个护士和伤员拒绝离开。
“你们为什么不强迫他俩撤走呢?”
“她说他的伤势太重，不能转移。我们当然可以平安地把他运出来，但是目前不是争辩这个问题的时候。她本人的身体状态很差。”
“她受了伤吗?”
“没有。很可能受到点炮弹的惊吓，应该把她送回家。问题是战争已经结束了，你再也不能命令人家做这做那了。伤员们自己离开了医院。军人在被遣送回家之前就擅离了职守。”
“哪个别墅”?他问。
“据说是花园里闹鬼的别墅。圣吉洛拉莫。哎，她自己眼前就有一个鬼，一个烧伤的病人。他的脸还在，却已辨认不出模样。神经系统都烧坏了。即使你划亮一根火柴照着他的脸，也看不到他脸上的任何表情。那张脸已经沉睡了。”
“他是谁?”他问。
“我们不知道他的名字。”
“他不说话吗?”
那群医生大笑起来：“不，他倒是说话，他说个没完，他只是不知道自己是谁。”
“他是从哪里来的?”
“贝都因人把他送进了锡瓦绿洲。接着他在比萨待了一段时间，然后……很可能有一个阿拉伯人拿了他的名片。他很可能会卖了它，有一天我们会买到它，也许他们永远都不会卖。
那些玩意儿可是很好的护身符。坠落在沙漠里的所有飞行员——生还者都没有可以证明身分的物品。现在他被困在托斯卡纳地区的一幢别墅里，那个女孩不愿离开他，一口拒绝我们的
建议。盟军曾在那里安置了一百多名伤病员。在此之前，德军派了一小支军队守在那里，那是他们最后一个据点。别墅里有些房间绘有图画，每个房间绘有不同季节的风景。别墅外是一个峡谷。这个地方离佛罗伦萨约二十英里，是在山区。你当然需要一张通行证，我们大概可以找个人开车送你去。那里的情况仍然相当恶劣，到处是死牛和被熗杀的马匹，尸体被吃掉了大牛，人的尸体悬挂在桥上——战争最后的罪恶。到处都不安全，因为工兵并没有前往那里扫雷。撤退的时候，德军一路埋了地雷。医院设在那里实在不妥，死尸的气味最让人受不了要下一场大雪才能把这个国家清理干净。如果这时出现鸦群就好了。”
    “谢谢。”
    卡拉瓦焦走出医院，来到阳光底下。几个月来，他还是第一次走出户外，走出了亮着绿光的房间，那些房间在他的心中像是玻璃。他站在那里，感受一切新鲜的事物，打量忙碌的人们。他想：“我首先需要橡胶底的鞋，我需要胶鞋。”
卡拉瓦焦发现在摇摇晃晃的火车上很难入睡。车厢里有人抽着烟。他的太阳穴撞击着窗框。人人都穿着深色的衣服。这么多人在抽烟，使得聿厢好像着了火。他注意到每当火车经过墓地时，周围的旅客就划着十字。
割扁桃腺要穿胶鞋去才行，他想了起来，以前他曾陪着一个女孩和她的父亲割除她的扁桃腺。女孩看了一眼病房，里面挤满了孩子。女孩一个劲儿拒绝。这个最听话、最乖巧的孩子突然变得不听话，怎么说都不听。没有人从她的喉咙里取出什么来，尽管那天应该那么做。她要留着它，不管“它”长得什么样子。他仍不清楚扁桃腺到底是什么东西。
那些医生从没有碰过我的脑袋，他想，这真是奇怪的事。最糟糕的莫过于他开始想象他们随后会对他做什么事，或切掉他身体的某个部位。在这样的情况下，他总是想起他的脑袋。
一阵骚动，像是有只老鼠跑过天花板。
    卡拉瓦焦拿着旅行袋站在走廊的另一头。他放下袋子，挥手走过黑暗的地方，走过蜡烛照亮的地方。他朝她走去，没有劈啪作响的脚步声，地板无声无息。她吃了一惊，感到有些熟悉，又有些欣慰。他可以如此静悄悄地走近她和英国病人身旁。
当他经过长长的走廊时，那一盏盏灯把他的影子投向身前。她抬起头，挑起油灯的灯芯，这样身边的灯光照亮的范围就更大了。她静静地坐着，膝上放着一本书。这时他走到她的跟前，蹲在她的身边，就像她的叔叔似的。
"告诉我什么是扁桃腺。”
    她的眼睛瞪着他。
    “我老是想起你冲出医院时，后面有两个大人在追的样子。”
她点点头。
    “你的病人在这里吗?我可以进去吗?”
    她摇摇头，一直摇个不停，直到他又开口说话。
    “那我就明天再见他吧。只要告诉我，我可以待在哪儿。我并不需要床单。这里有厨房吗?为了找你，我经历了一趟奇怪的旅程。”
在他朝走廊那头走去以后，她回到桌旁，坐了下来，浑身战栗。她需要这张桌子，需要这本读了一半的书，来稳定自己的情绪。一个她认识的人搭了火车过来，从那个村子走了四英里的山路，沿着走廊来到这张桌前，只是为了看看她。过了几分钟，她走进了英国人的房间，站在那里，俯视着他。月光照亮了墙上的树叶，这惟一的光源使得原本已栩栩如生的绘画显得更逼真。她几乎要摘下那朵画中的花，把它别到衣服上。
那个叫卡拉瓦焦的人打开了房间所有的窗户，这样他就可以听到夜晚的声籁。他脱了衣服，用掌心按摩着脖子，在没有铺好的床上躺了一会儿。树木在叹息不止，月亮的碎光像银白色的鱼，在房外的菊花上跳跃着。
    月光映照在他的皮肤上，就像一汪清水。一个小时以后，他上了别墅的楼顶。站在最高处，他看清楚了楼顶的斜面有些部分被炸毁了，别墅周围被毁的花园和果园有两英亩大。他俯视着意大利的这片土地。
    清晨，他们在喷水池边勉强地聊了起来。
    “现在你是在意大利，你应该多多了解威尔地  。”
    “什么?”她正在喷水池里洗着被褥，听到这话抬起了头。
    他提醒她一句：“你曾告诉过我你喜爱他。”
    哈纳低下了头，觉得很难为情。·
    卡拉瓦焦走了过去，第一次打量这座别墅，站在凉亭张望花园。
    “是，你曾喜爱过他。你曾大谈你所知道的有关威尔地的最新消息，直让我们大家如痴如醉。那人真了不起!各方面都是最出色的，你曾这样说过。我们大家只得附和你这个自以为是的十六岁黄毛丫头。”
    “我也不知道那个黄毛丫头那时候是怎么回事。”她在喷水池边摊开了洗好的床单。
    “你曾是一个有危险倾向的人。”
    她跨过了石子路，石头缝里长着青草。他望着她那穿了黑色长袜的双脚，那件单薄的褐色洋装。她俯身探过栏杆。
    “我得承认，我想到这里来，我的内心深处确实对威尔地情有独钟。后来，你走了，我爸爸打仗去了……看看那些老鹰，它们每天早上都会飞到这儿来。这儿的一切都毁了，被炸得面目全非。整个别墅的自来水都断了，只有喷水池的水仍在流淌。盟军在撤走时毁坏了水管。他们认为这样我就会离开。”
    “你应该离开。他们仍得清理这个地区，这里到处都是没有引爆的炸弹。”
    她走到他的跟前，用手指按住他的嘴巴：
    “我很高兴见到你，卡拉瓦焦。除了你，没有其他人会让我觉得这样开心。所以，别告诉我你到这儿来是为了要劝我离开。”
    “我想找间有管风琴的小酒吧，喝酒的时候不会有炸弹爆炸。听一听弗兰克·西纳特拉@的歌。我们必须听点音乐，”他说，“对你的病人有好处。”
    “他的心仍在非洲。”
    他注视着她，等着她说点别的，但薀拓于英国病人，已没有什么事可说。他喃喃自语：“有些英国人喜爱非洲，他们的脑海中常浮现沙漠的景象，所以他们到了那里并不陌生。”
    他看到她略微点点头。一张瘦削的脸，一头短发，没有了长发的掩饰和神秘。要说有什么不同，便是她泰然自若，似乎进入了忘我的境界。身后是汩汩流淌的喷水池、老鹰、毁坏的别墅花园。
    也许这是人们走出战争的方法，他想。一个需要照顾的烧伤患者，一些要在喷水池里洗涤的床单，一间绘有花园景致的房间。仿佛现在的一切都只薀妄去的一个缩影，麦迪奇家族端详过的一道栏杆或一扇窗户，在夜里举起蜡烛，当着一位应邀而来的建筑师——十五世纪最杰出的建筑师—的面，请他提出令人激赏的奇思妙想，为这个景致增添颜色。
    “如果你留下来，”她说，“我们就需要更多的食物。我种了蔬菜，我们有一袋豆子，但是我们需要一些肉。”她看着卡拉瓦焦，了解他以前的本事，但没有完全挑明了说。
    “我下不了手。”他说。
    “那我跟你去，”哈纳提议，  “我们一起干。你可以教我偷东西，告诉我怎么做就行。”
    “你不懂，我办不到。”
    “为什么?”
    “我被抓过。他们几乎砍掉了这双该死的手。”
    到了夜里，有时，等到英国病人睡着，或者等她在他的房门外独自读了一会儿书以后，哈纳就去找卡拉瓦焦。卡拉瓦焦会在花园里，躺在喷水池的石沿上面仰望星星。有时她会在一个低矮的阳台上找到他。在初夏的季节，他发现夜里很难待在室内。大部分的时候，他会待在楼顶，靠近那堆坍塌的烟囱。但是，看到她的身影穿过阳台找他，他就会悄无声息地溜下去。哈纳会在那个无头的公爵雕像附近找到他。当地的一只猫就喜欢坐在石像的脖子上，见到有人过来，就会露出庄重而兴奋的样子。他总让她相信是她找到了他。这个熟知黑暗的人，从前喝醉了酒便会说自己是被一个猫头鹰家族养大的。
    他们俩站在山岬上面，远处可见佛罗伦萨的灯光闪烁。有时，她觉得他疯疯癫癫，有时又觉得他太安静了。白天，她会更加清楚地看见他的一举一动，注意到缠了绷带的双手上面僵硬的手臂，以及在她遥指山上远处的某个东西时，他是如何转动整个身体，而不是只转动一下脖子。但是她没有对他提起这些。
    “我的病人认为碾碎的孔雀骨头是种好药。”
    他抬头眺望夜空：“没错。”
    “那时你是个间谍吗?”
    “不完全是。”
    在黑暗的花园里，他觉得更自在，更容易在她面前掩饰自己。
“有时我们奉命去偷东西。那个时候，我是个意大利人，一个小偷。他们无法相信自己有多好运，他们拼命地利用我。我们约有四五个人，有一段时间我干得挺好，后来偶然间我被人拍了照。你能想象吗?    —    “我穿上英国式的无尾晚礼服，混进一个聚会，为了能偷取一些文件。其实我的本质就是一个小偷，不是了不起的爱国志士，不是了不起的英雄。他们只是以官方的名义，利用我的一技之长而已。但是有个女人带了一架照相机，她正给德国军官拍照，当时我正迈步朝舞厅对面走，恰好被摄人镜头之中。我听到了按快门的声音，顺着声音方向转过去，所以突然之间，未来的一切都变得危机四伏。那是一个将军的女友。
    “战时拍下的照片全都在政府实验室冲洗，交由盖世太保检查。在胶卷被送到米兰实验室冲洗时，他们就会发现我显然不在受邀之列，然后会有官员立案调查我的身分。所以我必须铤而走险，想法子把胶卷偷回来。”
    她探进头看了一眼英国病人，他那熟睡的身躯可能已神游到了沙漠深处，正在接受某人的治疗，那人的手指不断探人碗里，蘸上用脚底板的老茧做成的药膏，凑上前去，把黑色的药膏涂到他的脸上。她想象着那只手抚在她脸上的重量。
    她走向走廊的那头，爬进了她的吊床，离开地面时，摇晃了它一下。
    她在睡前思路最清楚，白天的情景一幕幕跃入眼帘，就像一个拿着课本和铅笔的小孩重温每一件事。只有在这个时候，白天的情景才变得有序，对她来说白天像是一张纸，她在纸上记下了满满的故事。例如，卡拉瓦焦所讲的他的一出戏，一幕偷窃的景象。
    卡拉瓦焦坐上一辆汽车离开聚会。汽车嘎吱嘎吱，行驶在弯度较小的碎石路上，夜色是那样安详。那天晚上，他混进科西麦别墅的聚会时，一直在注意那个拍照的女子，每当她朝他这个方向拍照时，他就转过身子回避。他凑到了这名女子附近偷听谈话，知道她叫安娜，是一位将军的情人，将军晚上会在别墅留宿，并在第二天早上取道托斯卡纳前往北方。那个女人的死亡或是突然失踪一定会引起怀疑。目前任何异常的情况都会受到调查。
    四个小时以后，卡拉瓦焦穿着袜子跑过草地，月光在地上映出他弯曲的身影。他在碎石路前停下脚步，缓慢地走过碎石路。他抬头看着科西麦别墅，看着透出灯光的窗户——战争中女人的宫殿。
    一道汽车的灯光——像是从水管喷射出来似的——照亮了他所在的房间，他停了下来，看到那个女人的眼睛盯着他—个男人在她的身上起伏，他的手指隐没在她的金发之间。他知道她已看到了，尽管他现在光着身子，但是她知道这是她先前在人头攒动的聚会时拍下的那人，因为碰巧他摆出了同样的站姿——在灯光照亮了他隐没在黑暗中的身子时，他吃惊地半
转过身子。汽车的灯光上扬，扫向房间的一角，然后消失了。
    接着屋里暗了下来。卡拉瓦焦既不知道该不该动，也不知道她会不会悄声告诉正在与她交欢的男人，房里还有别人。一个赤身裸体的小偷、一个赤身裸体的刺客。他该扑向床上那一对男女，伸手扭断他们的脖子吗?
他听到那个男人继续做爱，听到了那个女人默不作声—没有耳语—听到了她的想法，她的眼睛望着黑暗中的他。那个词应该是“想法”。卡拉瓦焦忽然想到了这一点。词汇使入迷惑，他的一位朋友告诉他，它们比小提琴更微妙。他回想起那个女人的金发，以及束发的黑带。
他听到了汽车转弯的声音，又等了一会儿。那张在黑暗中一闪而过的脸，仍让他感到心有余悸。灯光从她的脸上移到将军的身上，掠过了地毯，又照亮了卡拉瓦焦。他再也看不见她了。他摇摇头，比划一下割喉的姿势。他拿着照相机，好让那女人明白。然后他又隐没在黑暗中。他现在听到她对她的爱人发出了一声愉悦的低吟，他明白那是她对他表示同意的方式。没有说话，没有嘲弄，只是一个与他联络的信号，一种深刻的理解，所以他知道现在可以顺利溜到阳台，然后潜入夜色之中。
那时，他是花了很大的工夫，才找到她的房间的。他走进别墅，悄然穿过走廊，在半明半暗的灯光中，可以看见两旁的十七世纪壁画。卧室像是一件金装的黑色口袋。从卫兵身边走过的惟一办法，是装成一个无辜的人。他剥光身上的衣服，把衣服留在花圃里。
他赤身上了楼梯，登上二楼。二楼的卫兵看到他，以为窥见了他人的隐私，正在弯腰偷笑，所以哨兵的脸几乎贴着他的屁股。他用手肘轻轻推着卫兵，暗示自己是来赴某人晚上的邀约。这样真凉快，不是吗?这样的“武装”较易攻破最后防线，不是吗?
三楼的走廊。一个卫兵在楼梯旁，一个在二十码开外，是在走廊的那一头。所以他得蹑手蹑脚走上一段路。卡拉瓦焦现在必须这样。两个站得笔直的哨兵暗自怀疑，带着鄙视的目光监视着。他走路的样子笨拙滑稽，在一段壁画前停下脚步，偷看画中果园的毛驴。一会儿他把头抵着墙壁，．几乎酣然入睡，一会儿往前走去，跌跌撞撞，一会儿又直起身子，迈着军人的步伐。松开的左手朝天花板挥了一下，上面绘有像他一样光着屁股的小天使。一个小偷的致意，一曲简短的华尔兹。壁画的场景任意从他身边溜过，城堡，黑白相间的大教堂，吊高的圣徒。在这个战时的星期二。为了掩饰他的伪装，为了挽救他的性命。卡拉瓦焦铤而走险，想要找到自己的照片。
他拍拍赤裸的胸膛，仿佛在找他的通行证，又抓住他的那个地方，假装把它当成钥匙，好让他走进那个有人守卫的房间。他哈哈大笑，摇摇晃晃往回走，恨自己犯下这个可怜的错误，哼着小曲溜进了隔壁的房间。
他打开窗户，来到阳台上。一个黑暗而美丽的夜晚。接着他翻身出去，荡到二楼的阳台上。现在，他终于可以进入安娜及将军的房间。多年以前，他曾对谁家的孩子讲过一个人找自己影子的故事——现在他就在寻找自己留在一卷胶卷上的影子。
进了房间，他立即明白他们正在做爱。她的衣服有的扔到椅背上，有的丢在地上。他的双手探进她的衣服。他趴了下来，打算从地毯上滚过去，看看是否能摸到像照相机那样的硬物。他碰到了房间的地砖。他悄无声息，慢慢地滚了过去，什么也没有发现。屋里甚至没有一丝光亮。
他站了起来，慢慢伸出胳膊，碰到了大理石像的乳房。他顺着石臂摸去，照相机挂在上面，他现在明白那个女人的想法了。接着他听到汽车的声响，就在他本能地转过身时，那个女人借着汽车突然射进屋内的灯光看见了他。
卡拉瓦焦望着哈纳，坐在对面的哈纳直视他的眼睛，想知道他在想什么，像他以前的妻子那样，想了解他的思绪。他望着她，知道她正在寻找蛛丝马迹。他深藏不露，知道他的眼神没有露出什么破绽，像河水一样清澈，像大地一样无可挑剔。他知道别人会迷失在那里，而且他很会掩饰自己的情感。但是那个女孩望着他，神情古怪，带着疑问，歪着脑袋。当你用怪腔怪调对小狗说话时，小狗就会这样。她坐在他的对面，身后是黑暗的血红色墙壁，他不喜欢这种颜色。她那一头黑发，那种目光，那种幽幽的褐色目光。她让他想起了他的妻子。
在这一段时间里，他并不想他的妻子，尽管他知道可以转身，引她展现万种风情，描绘她的每一个部位，说出夜晚搭在他胸前的纤手有多重。
他把手放在桌下，坐在那里看着那个女孩吃饭。他仍然喜欢独自吃饭，不过，他三餐总是与哈纳坐在一起。虚荣，他想。致命的虚荣心。她曾透过窗户，看见他坐在小教堂的三十六级台阶上用手吃饭，看不到刀叉，仿佛学着东方人的样子吃饭。看着他那灰色的短须，看着他穿的深色甲克，她最后在他身上看见一个意大利人。她越来越注意到这一点。
卡拉瓦焦望着她映在暗红色墙壁上的黑影、她的皮肤，还有她那一头剪短的黑发。早在战争开始之前，他就在多伦多认识了哈纳和她的父亲。后来他成了一个小偷，一个已婚的男人，带着懒洋洋的自信混迹于他所选择的世界，精于欺骗富人，以及奉承妻子齐安妮塔和他朋友的小女儿。
但是，现在他们周围的世界几乎消失得荡然无存，他们只能依靠自己了。在佛罗伦萨附近这个山镇生活的这些日子里，雨天待在室内，或坐在厨房那张软椅上，或睡在床上，或睡在楼顶上，胡思乱想，无所事事，一心想着哈纳。可是，哈纳似乎已把自己与楼上那个将死之人锁在一起了。
三餐的时间，他坐在这个女孩的对面，看着她吃饭。
半年以前，透过比萨的圣齐亚拉医院走廊尽头的窗户，哈纳能看到一只白狮子。狮子独自站在城垛顶端，颜色与大教堂和墓地的白色大理石一致，但它的粗壮和质朴的形态似乎属于另外一个时代。她把白狮子当作来自过去的礼物接受。医院周围的一切景物，她最能接受的就是那只白狮子。在半夜里，她会从窗户往外观望，知道它就站在宵禁灯火管制范围之内，知道它会在黎明出现，像她在黎明时要起身交班一样。她会在五点或五点三十分抬头仰望，然后在六点看见它的轮廓越来越清晰。每天晚上，当她在巡视病人时，它就是她的哨兵。尽管军队进行了轰炸，它仍屹立在那里，关心着这不可思议的建筑物的别处——那个已无法辨识，不合逻辑的塔，像战火中饱受惊吓的人歪斜地站立着。
他们的医院设在昔日的修道院里。数千年来，一板一眼的修道士们一直修剪这些树林的形状，而如今它们的形状已代表某些动物了。护士们在白天推着坐在轮椅里的病人，穿过这片树林。只有白色的石头一成不变。
见到周围的死亡的人们，护士们受到了惊吓，就连信件这样的小东西都会吓坏她们。她们会在走廊那头捡起一只被炸断的手臂，擦洗止不住的血。伤口似乎是一口流不干的水井，她们开始什么都不相信，什么都不信任。她们身心俱碎，就像一个正在扫雷的人发现地图被炸飞了，以致于精神崩溃。哈纳在圣齐亚拉医院曾经痛不欲生，当时一名军官挤过一百多张病床，送给她一封告知她父亲已死的信。
一头白狮子。
过了一段时间，她遇见那个英国病人——看起来像是一只受伤的动物，神情紧张，身体焦黑——他成了她的精神寄托。
过了几个月以后，现在他成了她在圣吉洛拉莫别墅照顾的最后一名伤员。他们的战争已经结束了，两人拒绝与别人一起返回比萨的医院。所有的海岸港口，如索伦托和比萨的马里纳，现在都挤满了北美和英国的军人，等待上船回国。但是她洗净了自己的制服，叠了起来，把它交给离去的护士。别人告诉她并不是所有的地方战争都结束了。战争结束了。这场战争结束了。这里的战争结束了。别人对她说她这是擅离职守。这不是擅离职守，我要留在这里。别人告诫她当心那些没有清除的地雷，这里会缺水、缺食物。她走到楼上，来到那名烧伤的英国人跟前，告诉他她会留下来。
    英国人什么也没说，他甚至无法朝她转过头来，但是他的手指滑进了她白净的手中。她俯过身去，他伸出乌黑的手指，探进了她的发问。她觉得他的指间凉飕飕的。
    “你多大?”
    “二十。”
    他说有个公爵，在他快死的时候，想让人抬他到比萨斜塔的中间楼层，那样他死去的时候，就能看到不远不近的地方。
    “我父亲的一个朋友想在死的时候跳着上海舞。我不知道那是什么意思。他只是这么听人说过。”
    “你父亲是干什么的?”
    “他是…他参加了战争。”
    “你也参加了战争。”
    她已照顾他一个多月左右，还帮他注射吗啡，但却对他一无所知。起初两人的心中都有一丝羞涩感，现在别人都走了，他们更是如此。后来，他们突然克服了羞涩感。伤员、医生、护士、设备、床单、毛巾——全都下了山，转道佛罗伦萨去了比萨。她私藏了可卡因药片和吗啡。她望着一辆辆卡车开走。她从他的窗户挥挥手，随后关上了百叶窗。
    别墅后面是一堵比房子还高的石墙。西边是一个四周修了
围墙的花园，花园挺大。二十英里外是佛罗伦萨城，常常会隐没在从山谷升起的大雾之中。谣传曾有一个将军住在旁边那个古老的麦迪奇别墅，此人曾吃了一只夜莺。
    圣吉洛拉莫别墅坚不可摧，看起来像是一个受困的城堡。
大多数的雕像在炮击的头几天，就被炸得缺胳膊断腿。房子与大地之间没有界限，毁坏的楼房与遭到焚烧轰炸的地面没有多少区别。对哈纳来说，荒芜的花园就是延伸的房间。她沿着花园的四周工作，留意有没有引爆的地雷。在房子旁边一块土壤肥沃的地上，她开始开垦播种，带着只在城市里长大的人才有的热情。尽管土地被烧焦了，尽管缺水，但总有二天；这里会果木成荫，屋里灯光通明。
  卡拉瓦焦走进厨房，发现哈纳伏在桌旁。他看不见她的脸，也看不见压在身下的手臂，只能看见裸露的后背和光滑的肩膀。
  她并非闻风不动，她没有睡着。每抽动一下，她都摇一下脑袋。
    卡拉瓦焦站在那里。人在哭泣时比做别的事情更耗精力。黎明仍没有到来。她的脸抵着隐没在黑暗之中的桌子。
  “哈纳。”他说。她冷静了下来，仿佛平静下来就能掩饰她的哭泣。    
    “哈纳。”
    她开始呻吟起来，呻吟声成了他们之间的障碍，一条无法涉过的河。  
    他起先不知道该不该摸她裸露的肌肤。他叫了声“哈纳”，然后把缠了绷带的手搭在她的肩上。她没有停止颤抖。他沉浸于最痛心的悲哀之中，他想，生存的惟一途径是道出心中的一切。
    她抬起身子，低垂着头，然后靠着他站了起来，仿佛挣脱了桌子的磁力。
    “你别想引诱我和你睡觉。”
    洋装上方露出苍白的皮肤。她在厨房里只穿了洋装，仿佛她刚起床，衣衫不整就来到这里，从山上刮来的冷风吹进了厨房的门，将她团团裹住。
    她的脸又红又湿。
    “哈纳。”
    “你听清楚了吗?”
    “你为什么这么喜欢他呢?”
    “我爱他。”
    “你不是爱他，你是迷恋他。”
    “走开，卡拉瓦焦。请你走开。”
    “你为了什么原因把自己与一具尸体绑在一起?”    
    “他是个圣徒。我想他是。一个绝望的圣徒。世上有这些东西吗?我们的愿望是保护他们。”
    “他根本就不在乎你!”
    “我可以爱他。”    
    “一个二十岁的人抛下了一切，爱上了一个鬼魂：卡拉瓦焦顿了一下：“你必须把自己从悲伤的深渊中拯救出来。悲哀接近仇恨。听我说，这是我吸取的教训。如果你吸了别人中的毒，以为你分享了毒性就能治愈他们——你自己就会中毒而死。生活在沙漠的人比你明白。他们以为他会有用，所以他们救了他，但是等他没有用了，他们就会丢下他。”
    当她独自一人时，她会坐下来，留意脚踝神经的跳动，脚踝已被果园中长高的野草打湿了。她在果园找到了一个李子，装进黑口袋里，以便于剥去李子的皮。当她独自一人时，她试图想象有谁会在十八棵柏树的绿荫下，踩着那条古道走来。
    当英国人醒来时，她弯腰凑近他的身子，把三分之一的李子放进他的嘴里。他那张开的嘴巴接住它，像喝了水似的，下巴没有动弹。他看起来好像高兴得快哭出声来。她可以感觉到李子正被他吞下。
  他抬起手，擦去唇边最后一滴口水，他的舌头够不着。她把他的手指塞进他的嘴里吮吸。  “让我对你讲一讲李子的故事”，他说，“在我小的时候……”
    过了最初的几夜以后，大多数的床板已被烧了用来御寒，于是她拿走一个死人的吊床，准备自己睡在上面。她可以随心所欲，想将吊床钉在哪个房间，就钉在哪个房间，想在哪个房间睡觉，就在哪个房间睡觉，或躺在垃圾、火药和积水之上。每天晚上，她爬进幽灵般的帆布吊床，吊床原本属于一名已死的士兵，是她曾经照料过的人。
    一双网球鞋和一张吊床。在这场战争中，她只从别人那里拿来了这些东西。她在夜里醒来时，会看见一抹月光洒在天花板上。她总是穿着一件旧衬衫睡觉，裙子挂在门旁的铁钉上。现在暖和多了，所以她可以这样睡觉。天冷之前，他们必须生火。
    这里只有她的吊床、球鞋和衣服。她安身于她所建立的这个小世界里。另外两个男人似乎身在遥远的星球，生活在各自的记忆与孤独之中。卡拉瓦焦曾是她父亲的知己，从前在加拿大意气风发，可以在他所交往的那群女人当中呼风唤雨。他现在躺在自己的黑暗世界里。他曾是一个拒绝与男人一同工作的小偷，因为他不信任他们。他与男人说话，但他更喜欢与女说话，而只要他一与女人说话，他就会陷入亲密关系的网中。
当她在清晨溜回家时，她会发现他睡在她父亲的安乐椅里——由于夜间外出偷盗而疲惫不堪。
    她想着卡拉瓦焦——有些人你就是得和他们拥抱，但必须咬紧牙关，才能在他们面前保持理智。你需要抓住他们的头发，就像一个落水的人死死揪住任何可抓的东西，这样他们才会把你放在心上。否则，他们会漫不经心地从街道那头朝你走来，眼看就要挥手打个招呼，却又立刻跳过墙上，让你几个月见不到他们的身影。虽然他就像哈纳的叔叔一样，但他难得与她见上一面。
    只要卡拉瓦焦将你拥入怀里，就能扰乱你的思绪。他的双臂是他的羽翼。被他抱在怀里，你就会感染他的性格。但是，现在他睡在黑暗之中，像她一样，待在这座深宅大院的某个前哨阵地。卡拉瓦焦就在这儿，还有那个从沙漠来的英国人。
    她在战争期间负责照顾病情最重的伤员时，一向只是冷漠地履行护士的职责，否则她就要精神失常了。我会挺下去。我不会倒下去的。在战争期间，她曾辗转众多的小镇，到过乌尔比诺、安吉亚里和蒙特奇，随后开赴佛罗伦萨，继续前进，最后到达了比萨的海边。
    在比萨的医院里，她第一次见到了这个英国病人——一个面目全非的人，一具焦黑的躯体。身上和脸上烧伤的部位涂上了丹宁酸，丹宁酸在他那粗糙的皮肤上结成了一层有保护效果的硬壳。眼睛周围覆盖了厚厚一层紫药水。他的身分没有办法辨认出来。
    有时她会找几条毯子盖在身上，不是为了取暖，而是为了感受它们的重量。当月光洒在天花板上时，她醒了过来。她躺在吊床里面，思绪起伏不定。她得到了休息，但并不是舒舒服服地睡上一觉。如果她是作家，她会拿起铅笔和笔记本，带着心爱的小猫，躺在床上写作。陌生人和爱人永远都不会穿过那扇上锁的房门。    
    休息就是不评判地接受世界的一切。在海中洗澡，与一个永远都不会知道你名字的士兵睡上一觉。与陌生和不知名的人温存一番，也使自己得到安慰。
    她的双腿在军用毛毯下面挪动。她在羊毛之中挪动，而英国病人则在盖了棉被的床上挪动。
    她在这里见不到渐浓的夜幕，以及那片熟悉的树木所发出的沙沙声响。幼年时一直住在多伦多，这使她学会了观察夏夜。在那里她才会觉得自由自在，躺在床上，或在半睡半醒之间抱着小猫走到安全梯上。
    在她童年的时候，卡拉瓦焦就是她的老师。他教会了她翻筋斗。现在，他总是把手插在口袋里，只能扭动肩膀做个样子。谁知道战争迫使他住在哪个国家。她在女子医学院接受过训练，然后在入侵西西里时被派到海外。那是一九四三年。加拿大第一步兵师一路远征到意大利，不停地有伤员被送到野战医院，像是在黑暗之中挖掘隧道的工人运回的泥巴。在阿雷佐战役打响以后，当第一批部队撤下时，她日夜照料那些伤员。整整三天没有休息，最后她躺在地上，一个人死在身旁的席子上。她睡了十二个小时，闭上眼睛，无视周围的一切。
    等她醒来时，她从瓷碗里拿出一把剪刀，弯腰剪下她的头发，不在乎式样和长短，只想剪掉头发。想到前几天头发飘来荡去，她的心中就气恼不已。那时，当她伏下身时，她的头发就会碰到伤口流出的血。她绝不愿把自己与死亡连在一起，锁在一起。她抓抓剩下的头发，确信再也没有散发，然后转身面对满是伤员的病房。
    她后来再也没有照过镜子。随着战事更加激烈，她获悉认识的人相继死去的消息。她害怕有一天，等她揩去一个伤员脸上的血后，她会发现那是她的父亲，或者曾在丹福斯大街的饭店替她服务过的侍者。她变得严厉，对自己、对伤员都是这样。理由是惟一可能救赎他们的东西，但却没有理由。国家的血压升高了起来，多伦多在她的心目中是什么?多伦多在哪儿?这是一出丑剧。人们对周围的人冷若冰霜——士兵、医生、护士、平民。哈纳凑近她在治疗的伤口，冲着士兵耳语一番。
    她对任何人都叫“哥儿们”，而且嘲笑有一首歌歌词中的这两句：
    “每次我碰巧遇见富兰克林·D，
    他总是对我说声‘你好，哥儿们。”
    她擦净血流不止的手臂。她取出了数不清的弹片，她认为自己从所照料的伤员身上取出的弹片重达一吨。那时军队正在往北推进。有一天晚上，一个伤员死了，她不顾所有的规定，拿走了那人行囊里的网球鞋，并且穿到自己的脚上。它们略微大了一点，但她觉得穿起来很舒服。
    她的脸越发变得严厉而瘦削，就是卡拉瓦焦后来见到的那张脸。她身体单薄，主要是因为太累。她总是觉得饿，因而发现喂不能吃或不想吃的伤员，是又累又惹人生气的事。望着面包碎裂，热汤冷却，她真想大口吞下。她并不想吃什么稀奇的东西，只想吃面包和肉。有一个小镇的医院旁开了一间面包店，闲暇的时候，她在面包师傅中间走动，想得到一点面粉和食物。后来，在他们搬到罗马东面以后，有人给了她一个礼物，那是耶路撒冷产的朝鲜蓟。
    在大教堂或修道院或其它地方都有伤员，睡在这里感觉实在奇怪。他们总是往北推进。有人死了，她就把插在床脚的小旗撕碎，那是用硬纸板做的。这样的话，远处的看护兵就知道有人死了。然后她会离开巨石砌成的建筑，走到外面，不管是酷夏还是严冬，季节似乎十分古老，就像挨过战争的老人。她会走到外面，不管天气如何。她想呼吸不含一丝人味的空气，想见一见月光，即使是下着倾盆大雨。
    你好，哥儿们。再见，哥儿们。看护的时间不长，这是到死便解除的契约。她的精神或她的过去没有教会她如何成为一名护士，但是剪去头发就是一个契约，它一直生效，直到他们搬进了佛罗伦萨以北的圣吉洛拉莫别墅。除了她，这里另有四位护士、两位医生和一百多名伤员。在意大利进行的战斗再次北移，他们已被抛在后面。
    后来，在当地某次战斗获胜的庆祝期间——在这个山镇举行这样的活动有些令人感到哀伤——她说她不会返回佛罗伦萨，不会返回罗马，或其它的医院，她的战争已经结束了。她会和英国病人一同留下来。她后来明白，那人四肢几乎不能动，因而永远无法被移动。她会把颠茄  放在他的眼上，用生理食盐水帮他清洗长了瘢痕瘤的皮肤和多处的烧伤。有人告诉她医院不安全——这座女修道院曾被德军占领了数月，遭受过盟军的炮击。不会给她留下什么东西，也许还会受到土匪的打劫。她仍然拒绝离开，脱下了护士服，取出褐色印花洋装换上穿上网球鞋。她离开了战争。她曾听从他们的意愿搬来搬去。她会和那个英国人住在这座别墅里，直到修女们把它索回。她想了解他，融进他的思绪，深藏其中，那样她就可以逃避成人的世界。他对她说话的方式和他思维的方式有一种飘忽的感觉。她想救他，这个无名无姓，几乎面目全非的人，在军队往北进攻时，他曾是她所照料的两百来人当中的一个。
    她穿着印花洋装，离开庆祝的场地，走进与其他护士合住的房间，坐了下来。在她坐下的时候，有什么东西在她的眼里一闪。她从小圆镜里看到了眼睛。她缓慢地站了起来，朝它走过去。尽管镜子很小，但它似乎是个奢侈品。一年多来，她一直没有照过镜子，只偶尔打量一下自己映在墙上的影子。镜子只照出了她的面颊，她必须拿着镜子放到一臂开外。她的手晃动不已。她望着自己这幅袖珍肖像，仿佛嵌在一个胸针之中。是她。喧闹声从窗户传了过来，伤员们坐在椅子上，被抬到了阳光普照的户外，与医护人员一起大笑欢呼。只有那些重伤员仍然留在室内。想到这里，她微微一笑。你好，哥儿们，她说。她端详自己的眼神，试图辨认自己。
    哈纳和卡拉瓦焦在花园里散步，黑暗笼罩了他们。这会儿他开始用他熟悉的语调，慢吞吞地拖长了声音说话。
    “不知道是在谁的生日聚会上，到了深夜，在丹福斯大街。夜爬虫餐厅。哈纳，你记得吗?每个人都得站着唱歌。你的父亲、我、齐安妮塔和朋友们都一样，你说你也想唱歌——那还是破天荒第一次。你那时还在上学，你在上法语课时学会了那首歌。
    “你一本正经，站到板凳上，然后一脚踩到桌子上，旁边有着盘子、碟子和燃烧的蜡烛。
    “  A10nSon fon!’
    “你放声歌唱，左手按着胸前。Alonson fon!那里有一半的人不知道你到底在唱些什么。也许你不知道歌词的确切含义，但是你了解那首歌。
    “从窗口刮来的轻风吹起你的裙子，裙子几乎碰到了蜡烛，你的脚踝在酒吧里好像变得炽白。你的父亲抬头注视着你，惊叹你会用另一种语言唱歌，而且吐字那么清楚，挑不出一点毛病，没有口吃。你的裙子在烛光中摇曳。等你唱完歌的时候，我们站了起来。你走下桌子，投入了他的怀抱。”
    “我帮你取下手上的绷带吧。我是护士，这你知道。”
    “这些绷带挺舒服的，就像手套一样。”
    “发生了什么事?”
    “我跳下女人的窗口，当场就被抓了。我跟你提过她，就是那个拍照的女人。可是不能怪她。”
    哈纳抓住卡拉瓦焦的手臂，抚摸手臂的肌肉。  “让我来吧。”她从他的外套口袋里拉出了缠着绷带的手，白日里她曾见过它们呈现灰色，但在这样的光线下，它们几乎发出荧荧的光亮。
    她松开绷带，他退后几步，白色的绷带自手臂上盘旋而出，似乎他是个魔术师。绷带完全解开了。她走近他，想寻找儿时记忆中的叔叔。她看见他的眼睛希望捕捉到她的目光，为了延迟这一刻的到来，所以她直视他的眼睛。
   他的双手捧在一起，像是一只血肉做成的碗。她迎了上去，抬起脸，贴上他的面颊，然后依偎在他的肩上。她抓住了那双手，它们似乎结实、痊愈了。
    “我告诉你，为了留下这一双手，我只得与他们讲和。”
    “怎么讲成的?”
    “用我以前的技艺交换。”
    “噢，我想起来了。不，别动。别从我身边溜走。”
    “这期间真是奇怪，战争结束了。”
    “是。一个过渡期。”
    “是。”
    他举起双手，仿佛准备捧起一轮弦月。
    “他们砍下了两个大拇指，哈纳，瞧!”
    他当着她的面抬起了双手，让她看清已经瞥见的双手。他翻过一只手，似乎要显示他没有耍魔术，大拇指被砍去的地方看起来像是长了肉垂。他伸手摸向她的上半身。
    她感到腋下的衣服撑了起来。他用两根手指抓住她的肩膀，轻轻地把她抱人怀中。
    “我就像这样触摸棉花。”
    “在我小的时候，我总是在梦中与你一起登上夜色下的楼顶。你回到家，口袋装着给我的冷饭和铅笔盒，还有钢琴上取下的乐谱。”
    她对着他那张隐没在黑暗中的脸说话，树叶的阴影像一个有钱女人的饰带，拂过了他的嘴巴：  “你喜欢女人，对吗?你以前喜欢她们。”
    “我喜欢她们。为什么说以前喜欢呢?”
    “现在似乎已不重要了，经历了这场战争，经历了这些事。”  
    他点点头，树叶的影子掠过他脸上。
    “你曾经像那些只在夜里作画的画家一样，整条街上只亮着他那盏灯。就像挖蚯蚓的人，脚踝系着旧咖啡罐，头盔上的灯照着草丛，在城里的公园乱窜。你带我去了那个地方，就是他们兜售蚯蚓的咖啡店。那里像是一个证券交易所，你说过，那里的蚯蚓价格老是涨涨跌跌，—会儿五分，一会儿一毛。有人一贫如洗，有人大发横财。你记得吗?”
    “记得。”
    “跟我往回走吧，天凉了。”    
    “伟大的小偷的食指和中指天生几乎一样长，他们用�

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III
Sometime a Fire
THE LAST MEDIAEVAL WAR was fought in Italy in 1943 and 1944. Fortress towns on great promontories which had been
battled over since the eighth century had the armies of new kings flung carelessly against them. Around the outcrops of rocks
were the traffic of stretchers, butchered vineyards, where, if you dug deep beneath the tank ruts, you found blood-axe and
spear. Monterchi, Cortona, Urbino, Arezzo, Sanse-polcro, Anghiari. And then the coast.

Cats slept in the gun turrets looking south. English and Americans and Indians and Australians and Canadians advanced
north, and the shell traces exploded and dissolved in the air. When the armies assembled at Sansepolcro, a town whose symbol
is the crossbow, some soldiers acquired them and fired them silently at night over the walls of the untaken city. Field Marshal
Kesselring of the retreating German army seriously considered the pouring of hot oil from battlements.

Mediaeval scholars were pulled out of Oxford colleges and flown into Umbria. Their average age was sixty. They were
billeted with the troops, and in meetings with strategic command they kept forgetting the invention of the airplane. They spoke
of towns in terms of the art in them. At Monterchi there was the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca, located in the
chapel next to the town graveyard. When the thirteenth-century castle was finally taken during the spring rains, troops were
billeted under the high dome of the church and slept by the stone pulpit where Hercules slays the Hydra. There was only bad
water. Many died of typhoid and other fevers. Looking up with service binoculars in the Gothic church at Arezzo soldiers
would come upon their contemporary faces in the Piero della Francesca frescoes. The Queen of Sheba conversing with King
Solomon. Nearby a twig from the Tree of Good and Evil inserted into the mouth of the dead Adam. Years later this queen
would realize that the bridge over the Siloam was made from the wood of this sacred tree.

It was always raining and cold, and there was no order but for the great maps of art that showed judgement, piety and
sacrifice. The Eighth Army came upon river after river of destroyed bridges, and their sapper units clambered down banks on
ladders of rope within enemy gunfire and swam or waded across. Food and tents were washed away. Men who were tied to
equipment disappeared. Once across the river they tried to ascend out of the water. They sank their hands and wrists into the
mud wall of the cliff face and hung there. They wanted the mud to harden and hold them.

The young Sikh sapper put his cheek against the mud and thought of the Queen of Sheba’s face, the texture of her skin.
There was no comfort in this river except for his desire for her, which somehow kept him warm. He would pull the veil off her
hair. He would put his right hand between her neck and olive blouse. He too was tired and sad, as the wise king and guilty
queen he had seen in Arezzo two weeks earlier.

He hung over the water, his hands locked into the mud-bank. Character, that subtle art, disappeared among them during
those days and nights, existed only in a book or on a painted wall. Who was sadder in that dome’s mural? He leaned forward to
rest on the skin of her frail neck. He fell in love with her downcast eye. This woman who would someday know the sacredness
of bridges.

At night in the camp bed, his arms stretched out into distance like two armies. There was no promise of solution or victory
except for the temporary pact between him and that painted fresco’s royalty who would forget him, never acknowledge his
existence or be aware of him, a Sikh, halfway up a sapper’s ladder in the rain, erecting a Bailey bridge for the army behind
him. But he remembered the painting of their story. And when a month later the battalions reached the sea, after they had
survived everything and entered the coastal town of Cattolica and the engineers had cleared the beach of mines in a twenty-
yard stretch so the men could go down naked into the sea, he approached one of the mediaevalists who had befriended him—
who had once simply talked with him and shared some Spam—and promised to show him something in return for his kindness.

The sapper signed out a Triumph motorbike, strapped a crimson emergency light onto his arm, and they rode back the way
they had come—back into and through the now innocent towns like Urbino and Anghiari, along the winding crest of the
mountain ridge that was a spine down Italy, the old man bundled up behind him hugging him, and down the western slope
towards Arezzo. The piazza at night was empty of troops, and the sapper parked in front of the church. He helped the
mediaevalist off, collected his equipment and walked into the church. A colder darkness. A greater emptiness, the sound of his
boots filling the area. Once more he smelled the old stone and wood. He lit three flares. He slung block and tackle across the
columns above the nave, then fired a rivet already threaded with rope into a high wooden beam. The professor was watching
him bemused, now and then peering up into the high darkness. The young sapper circled him and knotted a sling across his
waist and shoulders, taped a small lit flare to the old man’s chest.

He left him there by the communion rail and noisily climbed the stairs to the upper level, where the other end of the rope
was. Holding onto it, he stepped off the balcony into the darkness, and the old man was simultaneously swung up, hoisted up
fast until, when the sapper touched ground, he swung idly in midair within three feet of the frescoed walls, the flare
brightening a halo around him. Still holding the rope the sapper walked forward until the man swung to the right to hover in
front of The Flight of Emperor Maxentius.

Five minutes later he let the man down. He lit a flare for himself and hoisted his body up into the dome within the deep blue
of the artificial sky. He remembered its gold stars from the time he had gazed on it with binoculars. Looking down he saw the
mediaevalist sitting on a bench, exhausted. He was now aware of the depth of this church, not its height. The liquid sense of it.
The hollowness and darkness of a well. The flare sprayed out of his hand like a wand. He pulleyed himself across to her face,
his Queen of Sadness, and his brown hand reached out small against the giant neck.

The Sikh sets up a tent in the far reaches of the garden, where Hana thinks lavender was once grown. She has found dry
leaves in that area which she has rolled in her fingers and identified. Now and then after a rain she recognizes the perfume of it.

At first he will not come into the house at all. He walks past on some duty or other to do with the dismantling of mines.
Always courteous. A little nod of his head. Hana sees him wash at a basin of collected rainwater, placed formally on top of a
sundial. The garden tap, used in previous times for the seedbeds, is now dry. She sees his shirtless brown body as he tosses
water over himself like a bird using its wing. During the day she notices mostly his arms in the short-sleeved army shirt and the
rifle which is always with him, even though battles seem now to be over for them.

He has various postures with the gun—half-staff, half a crook for his elbows when it is over his shoulders. He will turn,
suddenly realizing she is watching him. He is a survivor of his fears, will step around anything suspicious, acknowledging her
look in this panorama as if claiming he can deal with it all.

He is a relief to her in his self-sufficiency, to all of them in the house, though Caravaggio grumbles at the sapper’s continuous
humming of Western songs he has learned for himself in the last three years of the war. The other sapper, who had
arrived with him in the rainstorm, Hardy he was called, is billeted elsewhere, nearer the town, though she has seen them
working together, entering a garden with their wands of gad-getry to clear mines.

The dog has stuck by Caravaggio. The young soldier, who will run and leap with the dog along the path, refuses to give it
food of any kind, feeling it should survive on its own. If he finds food he eats it himself. His courtesy goes only so far. Some
nights he sleeps on the parapet that overlooks the valley, crawling into his tent only if it rains.

He, for his part, witnesses Caravaggio’s wanderings at night. On two occasions the sapper trails Caravaggio at a distance.
But two days later Caravaggio stops him and says, Don’t follow me again. He begins to deny it, but the older man puts his
hand across his lying face and quiets him. So the soldier knows Caravaggio was aware of him two nights before. In any case,
the trailing was simply a remnant of a habit he had been taught during the war. Just as even now he desires to aim his rifle and
fire and hit some target precisely. Again and again he aims at a nose on a statue or one of the brown hawks veering across the
sky of the valley.

He is still very much a youth. He wolfs down food, jumps up to clear away his plate, allowing himself half an hour for lunch.

She has watched him at work, careful and timeless as a cat, in the orchard and within the overgrown garden that rises behind
the house. She notices the darker brown skin of his wrist, which slides freely within the bangle that clinks sometimes when he
drinks a cup of tea in front of her.

He never speaks about the danger that comes with his kind of searching. Now and then an explosion brings her and Caravaggio
quickly out of the house, her heart taut from the muffled blast. She runs out or runs to a window seeing Cara-vaggio
too in the corner of her vision, and they will see the sapper waving lazily towards the house, not even turning around from the
herb terrace.

Once Caravaggio entered the library and saw the sapper up by the ceiling, against the trompe 1’oeil—only Caravaggio
would walk into a room and look up into the high corners to see if he was alone—and the young soldier, his eyes not leaving
their focus, put out his palm and snapped his fingers, halting Caravaggio in his entrance, a warning to leave the room for safety
as he unthreaded and cut a fuze wire he had traced to that corner, hidden above the valance.

He is always humming or whistling. “Who is whistling?” asks the English patient one night, having not met or even seen the
newcomer. Always singing to himself as he lies upon the parapet looking up at a shift of clouds.

When he steps into the seemingly empty villa he is noisy. He is the only one of them who has remained in uniform.
Immaculate, buckles shined, the sapper appears out of his tent, his turban symmetrically layered, the boots clean and banging
into the wood or stone floors of the house. On a dime he turns from a problem he is working on and breaks into laughter. He
seems unconsciously in love with his body, with his physicalness, bending over to pick up a slice of bread, his knuckles
brushing the grass, even twirling the rifle absent-mindedly like a huge mace as he walks along the path of cypresses to meet the
other sappers in the village.

He seems casually content with this small group in the villa, some kind of loose star on the edge of their system. This is like
a holiday for him after the war of mud and rivers and bridges. He enters the house only when invited in, just a tentative visitor,
the way he had done that first night when he had followed the faltering sound of Hana’s piano and come up the cypress-lined
path and stepped into the library.

He had approached the villa on that night of the storm not out of curiosity about the music but because of a danger to the
piano player. The retreating army often left pencil mines within musical instruments. Returning owners opened up pianos and
lost their hands. People would revive the swing on a grandfather clock, and a glass bomb would blow out half a wall and
whoever was nearby.

He followed the noise of the piano, rushing up the hill with Hardy, climbed over the stone wall and entered the villa As long
as there was no pause it meant the player would not lean forward and pull out the thin metal band to set the metronome going.
Most pencil bombs were hidden in these—the easiest place to solder the thin layer of wire upright. Bombs were attached to
taps, to the spines of books, they were drilled into fruit trees so an apple falling onto a lower branch would detonate the tree,

just as a hand gripping that branch would. He was unable to look at a room or field without seeing the possibilities of
weapons there.

He had paused by the French doors, leaned his head against the frame, then slid into the room and except for moments of
lightning remained within the darkness. There was a girl standing, as if waiting for him, looking down at the keys she was
playing. His eyes took in the room before they took her in, swept across it like a spray of radar. The metronome was ticking
already, swaying innocently back and forth. There was no danger, no tiny wire. He stood there in his wet uniform, the young
woman at first unaware of his entrance.

Beside his tent the antenna of a crystal set is strung up into the trees. She can see the phosphorus green from the radio dial if
she looks over there at night with Caravaggio’s field glasses, the sapper’s shifting body covering it up suddenly if he moves
across the path of vision. He wears the portable contraption during the day, just one earphone attached to his head, the other
loose under his chin, so he can hear sounds from the rest of the world that might be important to him. He will come into the
house to pass on whatever information he has picked up that he thinks might be interesting to them. Oie afternoon he
announces that the bandleader Glenn Miller has died, his plane having crashed somewhere between England and France.

So he moves among them. She sees him in the distance of a defunct garden with the diviner or, if he has found something,
unravelling that knot of wires and fuzes someone has left him like a terrible letter.

He is always washing his hands. Caravaggio at first thinks he is too fussy. “How did you get through a war?” Caravaggio
laughs.

“I grew up in India, Uncle. You wash your hands all the time. Before all meals. A habit. I was born in the Punjab.”

“I’m from Upper America,” she says.

He sleeps half in and half out of the tent. She sees his hands remove the earphone and drop it onto his lap.

Then Hana puts down the glasses and turns away.

They were under the huge vault. The sergeant lit a flare, and the sapper lay on the floor and looked up through the rifle’s
telescope, looked at the ochre faces as if he were searching for a brother in the crowd. The cross hairs shook along the biblical
figures, the light dousing the coloured vestments and flesh darkened by hundreds of years of oil and candle smoke. And now
this yellow gas smoke, which they knew was outrageous in this sanctuary, so the soldiers would be thrown out, would be
remembered for abusing the permission they received to see the Great Hall, which they had come to, wading up beachheads
and the one thousand skirmishes of small wars and the bombing of Monte Cassino and then walking in hushed politeness
through the Raphael Stanze till they were here, finally, seventeen men who had landed in Sicily and fought their way up the
ankle of the country to be here— where they were offered just a mostly dark hall. As if being in the presence of the place was
enough.

And one of them had said, “Damn. Maybe more light, Sergeant Shand?” And the sergeant released the catch of the flare and
held it up in his outstretched arm, the niagara of its light pouring off his fist, and stood there for the length of its burn like that.
The rest of them stood looking up at the figures and faces crowded onto the ceiling that emerged in the light. But the young
sapper was already on his back, the rifle aimed, his eye almost brushing the beards of Noah and Abraham and the variety of
demons until he reached the great face and was stilled by it, the face like a spear, wise, unforgiving.

The guards were yelling at the entrance and he could hear the running steps, just another thirty seconds left on the flare. He
rolled over and handed the rifle to the padre. “That one. Who is he? At three o’clock northwest, who is he? Quick, the flare is
almost out.”

The padre cradled the rifle and swept it over to the corner, and the flare died.

He returned the rifle to the young Sikh.

“You know we shall all be in serious trouble over this lighting of weapons in the Sistine Chapel. I should not have come
here. But I also must thank Sergeant Shand, he was heroic to do it. No real damage has been done, I suppose.”

“Did you see it? The face. Who was it?”

“Ah yes, it is a great face.”

“You saw it.”

“Yes. Isaiah.”

When the Eighth Army got to Gabicce on the east coast, the sapper was head of night patrol. On the second night he received
a signal over the shortwave that there was enemy movement in the water. The patrol sent out a shell and the water erupted, a
rough warning shot. They did not hit anything, but in the white spray of the explosion he picked up a darker outline of
movement. He raised the rifle and held the drifting shadow in his sights for a full minute, deciding not to shoot in order to see
if there would be other movement nearby. The enemy was still camped up north, in Rimini, on the edge of the city. He had the
shadow in his sights when the halo was suddenly illuminated around the head of the Virgin Mary. She was coming out of the
sea.

She was standing in a boat. Two men rowed. Two other men held her upright, and as they touched the beach the people of
the town began to applaud from their dark and opened windows.

The sapper could see the cream-coloured face and the halo of small battery lights. He was lying on the concrete pillbox,
between the town and the sea, watching her as the four men climbed out of the boat and lifted the five-foot-tall plaster statue
into their arms. They walked up the beach, without pausing, no hesitation for the mines. Perhaps they had watched them being
buried and charted them when the Germans had been there. Their feet sank into the sand. This was Gabicce Mare on May 29,
1944. Marine Festival of the Virgin Mary.

Adults and children were on the streets. Men in band uniforms had also emerged. The band would not play and break the
rules of curfew, but the instruments were still part of the ceremony, immaculately polished.

He slid from the darkness, the mortar tube strapped to his back, carrying the rifle in his hands. In his turban and with the
weapons he was a shock to them. They had not expected him to emerge too out of the no-man’s-land of the beach.

He raised his rifle and picked up her face in the gun sight —ageless, without sexuality, the foreground of the men’s dark
hands reaching into her light, the gracious nod of the twenty small light bulbs. The figure wore a pale blue cloak, her left knee
raised slightly to suggest drapery.

They were not romantic people. They had survived the Fascists, the English, Gauls, Goths and Germans. They had been
owned so often it meant nothing. But this blue and cream plaster figure had come out of the sea, was placed in a grape truck
full of flowers, while the band marched ahead of her in silence. Whatever protection he was supposed to provide for this town
was meaningless. He couldn’t walk among their children in white dresses with these guns.

He moved one street south of them and walked at the speed of the statue’s movement, so they reached the joining streets at
the same time. He raised his rifle to pick up her face once again in his sights. It all ended on a promontory overlooking the sea,
where they left her and returned to their homes. None of them was aware of his continued presence on the periphery.

Her face was still lit. The four men who had brought her by boat sat in a square around her like sentries. The battery attached
to her back began to fade; it died at about four-thirty in the morning. He glanced at his watch then. He picked up the men with
the rifle telescope. Two were asleep. He swung the sights up to her face and studied her again. A different look in the fading
light around her. A face which in the darkness looked more like someone he knew. A sister. Someday a daughter. If he could
have parted with it, the sapper would have left something there as his gesture. But he had his own faith after all.

Caravaggio enters the library. He has been spending most afternoons there. As always, books are mystical creatures to him.
He plucks one out and opens it to the title page. He is in the room about five minutes before he hears a slight groan.

He turns and sees Hana asleep on the sofa. He closes the book and leans back against the thigh-high ledge under the shelves.
She is curled up, her left cheek on the dusty brocade and her right arm up towards her face, a fist against her jaw. Her
eyebrows shift, the face concentrating within sleep.

When he had first seen her after all this time she had looked taut, boiled down to just body enough to get her through this
efficiently. Her body had been in a war and, as in love, it had used every part of itself.

He sneezed out loud, and when he looked up from the movement of his tossed-down head she was awake, the eyes open
staring ahead at him. “Guess what time it is.”

“About four-oh-five. No, four-oh-seven,” she said. It was an old game between a man and a child. He slipped out of the
room to look for the clock, and by his movement and assuredness she could tell he had recently taken morphine, was refreshed
and precise, with his familiar confidence. She sat up and smiled when he came back shaking his head with wonder at her
accuracy.

“I was born with a sundial in my head, right?” “And at night?”

“Do they have moondials? Has anyone invented one? Perhaps every architect preparing a villa hides a moondial for thieves,
like a necessary tithe.”

“A good worry for the rich.”

“Meet me at the moondial, David. A place where the weak can enter the strong.”

“Like the English patient and you?”

“I was almost going to have a baby a year ago.”

Now that his mind is light and exact with the drug, she can whip around and he will be with her, thinking alongside her. And
she is being open, not quite realizing she is awake and conversing, as if still speaking in a dream, as if his sneeze had been the
sneeze in a dream.

Caravaggio is familiar with this state. He has often met people at the moondial. Disturbing them at two a.m. as a whole
bedroom cupboard came crashing down by mistake. Such shocks, he discovered, kept them away from fear and violence.
Disturbed by owners of houses he was robbing, he would clap his hands and converse frantically, flinging an expensive clock
into the air and catching it in his hands, quickly asking them questions, about where things were.

“I lost the child. I mean, I had to lose it. The father was already dead. There was a war.”

“Were you in Italy?”

“In Sicily, about the time this happened. All through the time we came up the Adriatic behind the troops I thought of it. I had
continued conversations with the child. I worked very hard in the hospitals and retreated from everybody around me. Except
the child, who I shared everything with. In my head. I was talking to him while I bathed and nursed patients. I was a little
crazy.”

“And then your father died.”

“Yes. Then Patrick died. I was in Pisa when I heard.”

She was awake. Sitting up.

“You knew, huh?”

“I got a letter from home.”

“Is that why you came here, because you knew?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t think that he believed in wakes and such things. Patrick used to say he wanted a duet by two women on
musical instruments when he died. Squeeze-box and violin. That’s all. He was so damn sentimental.”

“Yes. You could really make him do anything. Find him a woman in distress and he was lost.”

The wind rose up out of the valley to their hill so the cypress trees that lined the thirty-six steps outside the chapel wrestled
with it. Drops of earlier rain nudged off, falling with a ticking sound upon the two of them sitting on the balustrade by the
steps. It was long after midnight. She was lying on the concrete ledge, and he paced or leaned out looking down into the valley.
Only the sound of the dislodged rain.

“When did you stop talking to the baby?”

“It all got too busy, suddenly. Troops were going into battles at the Moro Bridge and then into Urbino. Maybe in Urbino I
stopped. You felt you could be shot anytime there, not just if you were a soldier, but a priest or nurse. It was a rabbit warren,
those narrow tilted streets. Soldiers were coming in with just bits of their bodies, falling in love with me for an hour and then
dying. It was important to remember their names. But I kept seeing the child whenever they died. Being washed away. Some
would sit up and rip all their dressings off trying to breathe better. Some would be worried about tiny scratches on their arms
when they died. Then the bubble in the mouth. That little pop. I leaned forward to close a dead soldier’s eyes, and he opened
them and sneered, “Can’t wait to have me dead? You bitchl” He sat up and swept everything on my tray to the floor. So
furious. Who would want to die like that? To die with that kind of anger. You bitchl After that I always waited for the bubble
in their mouths. I know death now, David. I know all the smells, I know how to divert them from agony. When to give the
quick jolt of morphine in a major vein. The saline solution. To make them empty their bowels before they die. Every damn
general should have had my job. Every damn general. It should have been a prerequisite for any river crossing. Who the hell
were we to be given this responsibility, expected to be wise as old priests, to know how to lead people towards something no
one wanted and somehow make them feel comfortable. I could never believe in all those services they gave for the dead. Their
vulgar rhetoric. How dare they! How dare they talk like that about a human being dying.”

There was no light, all lamps out, the sky mostly cloud-hidden. It was safer not to draw attention to the civilisation of
existing homes. They were used to walking the grounds of the house in darkness.

“You know why the army didn’t want you to stay here, with the English patient? Do you?”

“An embarrassing marriage? My father complex?” She was smiling at him.

“How’s the old guy?”

“He still hasn’t calmed down about that dog.”

“Tell him he came with me.”

“He’s not really sure you are staying here either. Thinks you might walk off with the china.”

“Do you think he would like some wine? I managed to scrounge a bottle today.”

“From?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Let’s just have it now. Let’s forget him.”

“Ah, the breakthrough!”

“Not the breakthrough. I badly need a serious drink.”

“Twenty years old. By the time I was twenty ...”

“Yes, yes, why don’t you scrounge a gramophone someday. By the way, I think this is called looting.”

“My country taught me all this. It’s what I did for them during the war.”

He went through the bombed chapel into the house.

Hana sat up, slightly dizzy, off balance. “And look what they did to you,” she said to herself.

Even among those she worked closely with she hardly talked during the war. She needed an uncle, a member of the family’
She needed the father of the child, while she waited in this hill town to get drunk for the first time in years, while a burned man
upstairs had fallen into his four hours of sleep and an old friend of her father’s was now rifling through her medicine chest,
breaking the glass tab, tightening a bootlace round his arm and injecting the morphine quickly into himself, in the time it took
for him to turn around.

At night, in the mountains around them, even by ten o’clock, only the earth is dark. Clear grey sky and the green hills.

“I was sick of the hunger. Of just being lusted at. So I stepped away, from the dates, the jeep rides, the courtship’ The last
dances before they died—I was considered a snob. I worked harder than others. Double shifts, under fire, did anything for
them, emptied every bedpan. I became a snob because I wouldn’t go out and spend their money. I wanted to go home and there
was no one at home. And I was sick of Europe. Sick of being treated like gold because I was female. I courted one man and he
died and the child died. I mean, the child didn’t just die, I was the one who destroyed it. After that I stepped so far back no one
could get near me. Not with talk of snobs. Not with anyone’s death. Then I met him, the man burned black. Who turned out to
be, up close, an Englishman-”It has been a long time, David, since I thought of anything to do with a man.”

After a week of the Sikh sapper’s presence around the villa they adapted to his habits of eating. Wherever he was—on the
hill or in the village—he would return around twelve-thirty and join Hana and Caravaggio, pull out the small bundle of blue
handkerchief from his shoulder bag and spread it onto the table alongside their meal. His onions and his herbs— which
Caravaggio suspected he was taking from the Franciscans’ garden during the time he spent there sweeping the place for mines.
He peeled the onions with the same knife he used to strip rubber from a fuze wire. This was followed by fruit. Caravaggio
suspected he had gone through the whole invasion never eating from a mess canteen.

In fact he had always been dutifully in line at the crack of dawn, holding out his cup for the English tea he loved, adding to it
his own supply of condensed milk. He would drink slowly, standing in sunlight to watch the slow movement of troops who, if
they were stationary that day, would already be playing canasta by nine a.m.

Now, at dawn, under the scarred trees in the half-bombed gardens of the Villa San Girolamo, he takes a mouthful of water
from his canteen. He pours tooth powder onto the brush and begins a ten-minute session of lackadaisical brushing as he
wanders around looking down into the valley still buried in the mist, his mind curious rather than awestruck at the vista he
happens now to be living above. The brushing of teeth, since he was a child, has always been for him an outdoor activity.

The landscape around him is just a temporary thing, there is no permanence to it. He simply acknowledges the possibility of
rain, a certain odour from a shrub. As if his mind, even when unused, is radar, his eyes locating the choreography of inanimate
objects for the quarter-mile around him, which is the killing radius of small arms. He studies the two onions he has pulled out
of the earth with care, aware that gardens too have been mined by retreating armies.

At lunch there is Caravaggio’s avuncular glance at the objects on the blue handkerchief. There is probably some rare animal,

Caravaggio thinks, who eats the same foods that this young soldier eats with his right hand, his fingers carrying it to his
mouth. He uses the knife only to peel the skin from the onion, to slice fruit.

The two men take a trip by cart down into the valley to pick up a sack of flour. Also, the soldier has to deliver maps of the
cleared areas to headquarters at San Domenico. Finding it difficult to ask questions about each other, they speak about Hana.
There are many questions before the older man admits having known her before the war.

“In Canada?”

“Yes, I knew her there.”

They pass numerous bonfires on the sides of the road and Caravaggio diverts the young soldier’s attention to them. The
sapper’s nickname is Kip. “Get Kip.” “Here comes Kip.” The name had attached itself to him curiously. In his first bomb
disposal report in England some butter had marked his paper, and the officer had exclaimed, “What’s this? Kipper grease?”
and laughter surrounded him. He had no idea what a kipper was, but the young Sikh had been thereby translated into a salty
English fish. Within a week his real name, Kirpal Singh, had been forgotten. He hadn’t minded this. Lord Suffolk and his
demolition team took to calling him by his nickname, which he preferred to the English habit of calling people by their
surname.

接上~~~ No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can’t leave. But you two. We three. We’re free. How many sappers die? Why aren’t you dead yet? Be irresponsible. Luck runs out.” Hana was pouring milk into her cup. As she finished she moved the lip of the jug over Kip’s hand and continued pouring the milk over his brown hand and up his arm to his elbow and then stopped. He didn’t move it away. There are two levels of long, narrow garden to the west of the house. A formal terrace and, higher up, the darker garden, where stone steps and concrete statues almost disappear under the green mildew of the rains. The sapper has his tent pitched here. Rain falls and mist rises out of the valley, and the other rain from the branches of cypress and fir falls upon this half- cleared pocket on the side of the hill. Only bonfires can dry the permanently wet and shadowed upper garden. The refuse of planks, rafters from prior shell-ings, dragged branches, weeds pulled up by Hana during the afternoons, scythed grass and nettles—all are brought here and burned by them during the late afternoon’s pivot into dusk. The damp fires steam and burn, and the plant-odoured smoke sidles into the bushes, up into the trees, then withers on the terrace in front of the house. It reaches the window of the English patient, who can hear the drift of voices, now and then a laugh from the smoky garden. He translates the smell, evolving it backwards to what had been burned. Rosemary, he thinks, milkweed, wormwood, something else is also there, scentless, perhaps the dog violet, or the false sunflower, which loves the slightly acidic soil of this hill. The English patient advises Hana on what to grow. “Get your Italian friend to find seeds for you, he seems capable in that category. What you want are plum leaves. Also fire pink and Indian pink—if you want the Latin name for your Latin friend, it is Silene virginica. Red savory is good. If you want finches get hazel and chokecherries.” She writes everything down. Then puts the fountain pen into the drawer of the small table where she keeps the book she is reading to him, along with two candles, Vesta matches. There are no medical supplies in this room. She hides them in other rooms. If Caravaggio is to hunt them out, she doesn’t want him disturbing the Englishman. She puts the slip of paper with the names of plants into the pocket of her dress to give to Caravaggio. Now that physical attraction has raised its head, she has begun to feel awkward in the company of the three men. If it is physical attraction. If all this has to do with love of Kip. She likes to lay her face against the upper reaches of his arm, that dark brown river, and to wake submerged within it, against the pulse of an unseen vein in his flesh beside her. The vein she would have to locate and insert a saline solution into if he were dying. At two or three in the morning, after leaving the Englishman, she walks through the garden towards the sapper’s hurricane lamp, which hangs off the arm of St. Christopher. Absolute darkness between her and the light, but she knows every shrub and bush in her path, the location of the bonfire she passes, low and pink in its near completion. Sometimes she cups a hand over the glass funnel and blows out the flame, and sometimes she leaves it burning and ducks under it and enters through the open flaps, to crawl in against his body, the arm she wants, her tongue instead of a swab, her tooth instead of a needle, her mouth instead of the mask with the codeine drops to make him sleep, to make his immortal ticking brain slow into sleepiness. She folds her paisley dress and places it on top of her tennis shoes. She knows that for him the world burns around them with only a few crucial rules. You replace TNT with steam, you drain it, you—all this she knows is in his head as she sleeps beside him virtuous as a sister. The tent and the dark wood surround them. They are only a step past the comfort she has given others in the temporary hospitals in Ortona or Monterchi. Her body for last warmth, her whisper for comfort, her needle for sleep. But the sapper’s body allows nothing to enter him that comes from another world. A boy in love who will not eat the food she gathers, who does not need or want the drug in a needle she could slide into his arm, as Caravaggio does, or those ointments of desert invention the Englishman craves, ointments and pollen to reassemble himself the way the Bedouin had done for him. Just for the comfort of sleep. There are ornaments he places around himself. Certain leaves she has given him, a stub of candle, and in his tent the crystal set and the shoulder bag full of the objects of discipline. He has emerged from the fighting with a calm which, even if false, means order for him. He continues his strictness, following the hawk in its float along the valley within the V of his rifle sight, opening up a bomb and never taking his eyes off what he is searching for as he pulls a Thermos towards him and unscrews the top and drinks, never even looking at the metal cup. The rest of us are just periphery, she thinks, his eyes are only on what is dangerous, his listening ear on whatever is happening in Helsinki or Berlin that comes over the shortwave. Even when he is a tender lover, and her left hand holds him above the kara, where the muscles of his forearm tense, she feels invisible to that lost look till his groan when his head falls against her neck. Everything else, apart from danger, is periphery. She has taught him to make a noise, desired it of him, and if he is relaxed at all since the fighting it is only in this, as if finally willing to admit his whereabouts in the darkness, to signal out his pleasure with a human sound. How much she is in love with him or he with her we don’t know. Or how much it is a game of secrets. As they grow intimate the space between them during the day grows larger. She likes the distance he leaves her, the space he assumes is their right. It gives each of them a private energy, a code of air between them when he passes below her window without a word, walking the half-mile to assemble with the other sappers in the town. He passes a plate or some food into her hands. She places a leaf across his brown wrist. Or they work with Caravaggio between them mortaring up a collapsing wall. The sapper sings his Western songs, which Caravaggio enjoys but pretends not to. “Pennsylvania six-five-oh-oh-oh,” the young soldier gasps. She learns all the varieties of his darkness. The colour of his forearm against the colour of his neck. The colour of his palms, his cheek, the skin under the turban. The darkness of fingers separating red and black wires, or against bread he picks off the gunmetal plate he still uses for food. Then he stands up. His self-sufficiency seems rude to them, though no doubt he feels it is excessive politeness. She loves most the wet colours of his neck when he bathes. And his chest with its sweat which her fingers grip when he is over her, and the dark, tough arms in the darkness of his tent, or one time in her room when light from the valley’s city, finally free of curfew, rose among them like twilight and lit the colour of his body. Later she will realize he never allowed himself to be beholden to her, or her to him. She will stare at the word in a novel, lift it off the book and carry it to a dictionary. Beholden. To be under obligation. And he, she knows, never allowed that. If she crosses the two hundred yards of dark garden to him it is her choice, and she might find him asleep, not from a lack of love but from necessity, to be clear-minded towards the next day’s treacherous objects. He thinks her remarkable. He wakes and sees her in the spray of the lamp. He loves most her face’s smart look. Or in the evenings he loves her voice as she argues Caravaggio out of a foolishness. And the way she crawls in against his body like a saint. They talk, the slight singsong of his voice within the canvas smell of their tent, which has been his all through the Italian campaign, which he reaches up to touch with his slight fingers as if it too belonged to his body, a khaki wing he folds over himself during the night. It is his world. She feels displaced out of Canada during these nights. He asks her why she cannot sleep. She lies there irritated at his self-sufficiency, his ability to turn so easily away from the world. She wants a tin roof for the rain, two poplar trees to shiver outside her window, a noise she can sleep against, sleeping trees and sleeping roofs that she grew up with in the east end of Toronto and then for a couple of years with Patrick and Clara along the Skootamatta River and later Georgian Bay. She has not found a sleeping tree, even in the density of this garden. “Kiss me. It’s your mouth I’m most purely in love with. Your teeth.” And later, when his head has fallen to one side, towards the air by the tent’s opening, she has whispered aloud, heard only by herself, “Perhaps we should ask Caravaggio. My father told me once that Caravaggio was a man always in love. Not just in love but always sinking within it. Always confused. Always happy. Kip? Do you hear me? I’m so happy with you. To be with you like this.” Most of all she wished for a river they could swim in. There was a formality in swimming which she assumed was like being in a ballroom. But he had a different sense of rivers, had entered the Moro in silence and pulled the harness of cables attached to the folding Bailey bridge, the bolted steel panels of it slipping into the water behind him like a creature, and the sky then had lit up with shell fire and someone was sinking beside him in mid-river. Again and again the sappers dove for the lost pulleys, grappling hooks in the water among them, mud and surface and faces lit up by phosphorus flares in the sky around them. All through the night, weeping and shouting, they had to stop each other going crazy. Their clothes full of winter river, the bridge slowly eased into a road above their heads. And two days later another river. Every river they came to was bridge-less, as if its name had been erased, as if the sky were starless, homes doorless. The sapper units slid in with ropes, carried cables over their shoulders and spannered the bolts, oil-covered to silence the metals, and then the army marched over. Drove over the prefabricated bridge with the sappers still in the water below. So often they were caught in midstream when the shells came, flaring into mudbanks breaking apart the steel and iron into stones. Nothing would protect them then, the brown river thin as silk against metals that ripped through it. He turned from that. He knew the trick of quick sleep against this one who had her own rivers and was lost from them. Yes, Caravaggio would explain to her how she could sink into love. Even how to sink into cautious love. “I want to take you to the Skootamatta River, Kip,” she said. “I want to show you Smoke Lake. The woman my father loved lives out on the lakes, slips into canoes more easily than into a car. I miss thunder that blinks out electricity. I want you to meet Clara of the canoes, the last one in my family. There are no others now. My father forsook her for a war.” She walks towards his night tent without a false step or any hesitation. The trees make a sieve of moonlight, as if she is caught within the light of a dance hall’s globe. She enters his tent and puts an ear to his sleeping chest and listens to his beating heart, the way he will listen to a clock on a mine. Two a.m. Everyone is asleep but her.

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3.有时候是一团火
  在一九四三年至一九四四年间，意大利经历了最后一场中世纪的战争。自从八世纪以来，山岬上的城堡小镇即为兵家必争之地，新国王们草率地把军队调到这里。裸露的岩石周围
是川流不息的担架。满目疮痍的葡萄园，在战斗的车辙下深挖几锹，你会找到血迹斑斑的斧头和熗矛。蒙特奇、科尔托纳、乌尔比诺、阿雷佐、圣塞波尔克罗、安吉亚里。还有海岸线。猫睡在朝南的炮塔里，英国人、美国人、印度人、澳大利亚人和加拿大人向北进军，炮弹爆炸之后就消失在空中。军队在圣塞波尔克罗集结，这个小镇的标志是石弓。有些士兵弄来了石弓，晚上默不作声，对着没有攻占的小城城墙开弓。凯塞林元帅指挥撤退的德军，他曾认真考聼妄从城垛上倒下热油。
    牛津各个学院中研究中世纪的学者们接到通知，他们搭乘飞机来到了翁布里亚。他们的平均年龄是六十岁。他们被编入了部队，与战略指挥官们开会时，老是忘了已经发明了飞机。提起小城、小镇，他们张口不离艺术。蒙特奇有彼埃罗的圣母像，藏在小镇葡萄园旁的小教堂里。在春雨之中，他们最终攻下了那个十三世纪的城堡。部队被安顿在教堂高大的穹顶之下，睡在石砌的神坛旁边。海格立斯曾在这里杀死了九头水蛇海德拉。这里没有干净的水。许多人死于伤寒和高烧。在阿雷佐的哥德式教堂里举起望远镜，士兵们会在彼埃罗的壁画里
找到同代人的面孔。示巴女王正与所罗门国王交谈。附近，善恶树的一条树枝塞进了死掉的亚当嘴里。多年以后，这位女王会知道西罗亚池上的小桥是用这棵圣树造成的。
    雨下个不停，天气冷得很，没有下达作战的命令。大幅作战地图揭示了判断、怜悯和牺牲。第八军渡过了一道桥梁已被炸毁的河，工兵部队顺着绳梯爬下河岸，闯入了敌人射程之
内，或游泳过河，或涉水过河。食品和帐篷被冲走了。过了河以后，他们设法上岸。他们将手腕插进岸边悬崖的淤泥中，悬挂在那里。他们希望淤泥变硬，以便支撑住身子。
    那个年轻的锡克工兵把脸贴在淤泥上，想到了示巴女王的脸庞，以及她那细腻的肌肤。他会伸出右手，搭在她的脖子和橄榄色上衣之间。他还感到疲惫和忧伤。就像在两个星期前，他在阿雷佐见到那位英明的国王和带罪的女王。
    他浮在河上，双手陷入了泥滩。性格，那微妙的艺术，经过了这些昼夜后，已从他们身上消失了，只存在书本和壁画之中。谁比穹顶里的壁画更加忧伤?他往前挪了一下，靠到她娇弱的脖子上。他爱上了她那低垂的眼睛。这个女人总有一天会明白桥梁的忧伤。
    夜里倒在行军床上，他的手臂像两支军队一样展开。没有解决或胜利的可能，除了他和绘在壁画上的王者之间所达成的临时契约。他们会忘了他，不承认他的存在，或者根本从未注意到他，一个锡克教徒，在雨中趴在绳梯的中央，为后面的军队架起一座活动便桥。在他想起记录他们那段故事的壁画之后一个月，那些工兵营到达了海边。他们闯过熗林弹雨，开进海边小镇卡托利卡。工兵们清理了二十码长海滩的地雷，这样人们就能赤身裸体地下海。他走到了刚结识的一位中世纪学者跟前——那位学者曾经与他谈了几句，与他分吃——些猪肉罐头，因此他答应给学者看一些东西，来报答他的好心。
工兵签了字，领了一辆摩托车，臂上绑了一盏红色的紧急灯。他们沿着来路骑车，返身经过现在已没有战事的小镇——乌尔比诺和安吉亚里——沿着弯曲的山路行驶，绵延的山脉贯穿整个意大利。老人坐在他的身后，紧紧抱住他。他们下了西坡，驶向阿雷佐。夜晚的广场没有部队，工兵在教堂前面停了车。他帮中世纪学者下车，拿起他的工具，走进了教堂——更冷的黑暗所在，更大的空旷所在。皮靴的声音充斥这个区域，他再次闻到了古老的石头和木头的味道。他点燃了三支火把。他登上凹砖，缠住中殿之上的柱子，然后把系了绳子的铆钉扔上一条高大的横梁。教授饶有兴趣地看着他，不时抬头张望漆黑的高空。年轻的工兵把他捆住，并在他的腰间和肩上系了一条吊带，用胶布把一支点燃的小火把固定在老头的胸前。
他把老人留在圣餐栏杆前，踩着梯子爬到绳子的另一头。他抓住绳子，离开阳台，进入黑暗。老人同时被荡了起来，很快就被拉了上去，直到工兵碰到了地面。老人便荡在半空，距离绘有壁画的墙壁三尺之远，火把在他的周围照出了一道光圈。工兵一边抓住绳子，一边往前走去，直到那人荡到左边，悬在《马克森提皇帝逃亡》的画前。
    五分钟以后，他放下那人。他为自己点着火把，吊起自己的身子，进入穹顶之中，四周是绘制的深蓝色天空。他想起了金星，他曾用望远镜观察过天空中的金色星星。他低下头，看到中世纪学者坐在板凳上筋疲力竭。现在他已了解这座教堂的深度，而不是它的高度。流畅的感觉。像井一样深、一样黑。火把像一根魔杖，在他手中闪闪发光。他扯着绳子荡到她的面前，他那忧伤的女王，他伸出棕色的手，差一点就摸到了巨大的脖子。
    锡克教徒在花园的那一头搭起了帐篷，哈纳认为那里生长过薰衣草。她曾在那个地方找到干燥的叶子，她用手指捞了起来，认出是薰衣草的叶子。下过雨后，她不时可以闻出它的芳香。
起先，锡克教徒无论如何也不肯搬进房子。负责扫雷执勤工作的时候，他会从旁边经过。他总是彬彬有礼，略微向人点头示意。哈纳看见他洗脸，积了雨水的脸盆放在日晷仪上。花园中从前用来浇灌苗圃的水龙头现在已没水了。她看见他打着赤膊的棕色身子，那时他正把水泼到身上，就像鸟拍打翅膀一样。她总在白天注意他那露出短袖军用衬衫的手臂，他总是随身带着步熗，尽管对他们来说，战争现在似乎已经结束了。
他用各种不同的姿势持熗——握住熗的中央，手臂半弯，熗搭在肩上。他会转过身来，突然发现她在看着他。他会担心受怕，但他挺了过来。他会绕过任何可疑的东西，大模大样地表示知道她在看他，仿佛是在声称他可以应付一切。
    他能照料自己——对此她颇感欣慰——从不对屋里的任何人造成负担，尽管卡拉瓦焦嘟哝着，抱怨这个工兵老是哼着他在战争最后三年里学会的西方歌曲。另一名工兵叫哈弟，与他在暴风雨中一同前来，被分配到别处，离小镇更近，哈纳曾见到他们在一起工作，带着扫雷用的工具进了花园。    那只狗黏着卡拉瓦焦不放。年轻的工兵会带着狗，沿着小径又跑又跳，但却拒绝给它食物吃，觉得它应该自谋生路。如果他找到食物，他就独自吃掉。他的礼貌仅此而已。有的时候，夜里他就睡在俯视山谷的扶墙上，只有在下雨的时候才爬进帐篷。
    而他则目睹了卡拉瓦焦在夜间游荡。有两次，工兵远远地跟踪卡拉瓦焦。但是两天以后，卡拉瓦焦叫住他，说道：“别再跟我了”。开始时他矢口否认，但是年长的人冲着那张撒谎的脸挥挥手，不让他说话。所以，工兵知道卡拉瓦焦在两个晚上前就发现他了。不管怎么说，他在战争期间学会了跟踪，旧习难改。就像到了现在，他仍想举熗瞄准，命中某个目标—锡克教徒一次次瞄准雕像的鼻子，或在山谷上空盘旋的棕色老鹰。
    他仍然年轻得很。他狼吞虎咽地吃下食物，跳起来舔干他的盘子，吃一顿午餐只花半个小时。
    哈纳看着他在果园里工作，或在房后杂草丛生的花园里工作，像猫一样谨慎，没有特定时间。她注意到他的手腕皮肤很黑。有时，当他端起杯子喝咖啡时，手镯在腕间滑动，叮当作响。
    锡克教徒从不谈论扫雷有多危险。不时传来的爆炸声，常引得哈纳和卡拉瓦焦赶紧跑出房子。沉闷的爆炸声总让她的心为之一紧。她跑出去，或者跑到窗前，眼角可以瞥见卡拉瓦
焦。他们会看见那个工兵懒懒地朝着房子挥手，甚至不从那块种着药草的苗坛转过身来。
有一次卡拉瓦焦走进书房，看到那个工兵在天花板旁，凑近那幅栩栩如生的画——只有卡拉瓦焦才会走进屋里，抬头仰望，看看屋里是否有其他人。那个年轻的工兵没有掉头，张开手掌，弹了弹手指，不让卡拉瓦焦进来，示意他为了安全起见最好离开房间。他卸下了金属线，顺着那条线找到了幕帷上面的屋角，然后切断了导火线。
锡克教徒总是哼着小曲，或者吹着口哨。“谁在吹口哨?”
有一天晚上，英国病人问道，他既没有遇到，也没见过那个新来的人。当锡克教徒躺在扶墙上仰望云朵的变化时，总是自哼自唱。
    当他踏进似乎空无一人的别墅时，总是吵吵嚷嚷。他是惟一仍然穿着军装的人。他走出了帐篷，穿着整齐，钮扣闪闪发亮，包头巾包得层次分明而且对称，皮靴锃亮，踩响屋里的木地板或石地板。他会突然放下手边正在处理的问题，放声大笑。他似乎在无意识之中与自己的身子恋爱，与他那健壮的身体恋爱。他弯腰捡起一块面包，他的膝盖扫过野草，甚至心不在焉地挥动步熗，好像挥动一把大锤。他走在柏树小道上，前去迎接村里的其他工兵。
    他似乎对别墅里的这几个人还算满意。别墅是他们那个星系里某颗遥远的星星。在尽是与烂泥、河流和桥梁打交道的战争以后，这对他来说就像度假一样。他只在应邀时才走进房里，只是偶尔拜访而已。那天晚上，他就是这样顺着哈纳弹奏的断断续续的琴声，沿着柏树小道，走进了书房。
    锡克教徒在那个风雨之夜走进别墅，并不是出于对音乐的好奇，而是因为弹琴的人危在旦夕。撤退的敌军经常把铅笔型炸弹放在乐器里。主人回家后一打开钢琴，便炸断了双手。人们给老爷钟上发条时，炸弹就会炸塌半堵墙，并把附近的人全都炸死。
    锡克教徒顺着琴声，与哈弟一起跑上山，翻过那堵石墙进了别墅。只要琴声不停，就表示弹琴的人没有倾身扯出那块薄铁片。以便踩动节拍器。大多数铅笔型炸弹被藏在那里—那个地方最容易垂直焊上那块薄铁片。炸弹被装在水龙头上，以及书脊上。它们被嵌进苹果树上，苹果落到下面的树枝上就会引爆炸弹，就像有只手扯动了树枝，引爆炸弹一样。他怀疑每一个房间或每一块田野都埋设了地雷。
    他站在落地窗前，脑袋靠着门框，然后溜了进去，偶尔会有闪电照亮漆黑的房间。有个女孩站在那里，仿佛是在等他。她低头看着琴键，正在弹奏。他的眼光扫过房间，就像雷达波束一样。节拍器已经嘀嗒作响，无辜地摆动着。没有危险，没有金属细线。他站在那里，身上穿着湿漉漉的军装，那个年轻的女人起先并没有发觉他走进来。
    在工兵那顶帐篷旁边，有一条架在树上的收音机天线，如果她在夜里拿出卡拉瓦焦的望远镜，便可以看见闪着荧光的无线电设备，工兵晃动的身影有时会出现在视野中，遮住了无线电装置。白天他一身轻装，头上只戴了一边耳机，另一边耳机挂在下巴下面，所以他能听见来自世界别处的声音，听到那些对他来说也许很重要的声音。他会走进屋里，转告他所听到的消息，他认为他们也许会对那些消息感兴趣。有一天下午，他宣布乐队的领队格伦·米勒死了，他的飞机在英国和法国之间某处坠毁了。
    所以他在他们之间走动。她看到他在远处一个荒芜的花园里，带着探雷的工具。如果他发现了什么，他就会解开缠结在一起的金属线和导火线，这是别人留给他的，宛若一封潦草的信。
    他老是洗手。卡拉瓦焦起先认为他太讲究。“你是怎么熬过这场战争的?”卡拉瓦焦哈哈大笑。
“我在印度长大的，大叔。你要不断地洗手。饭前洗手，这是一个习惯。我是在旁遮普出生的。”
  “我来自北美。”她说。
  他睡觉时一半身子在帐篷里，一半身子在帐篷外，她看到他的手摘下耳机，放在大腿上。
    哈纳随后放下望远镜，转过身去。
    他们置身于那个巨大的穹顶之下。中士点燃了一支火把，工兵躺在地上，透过步熗瞄准具，看着黄褐色的面孔，仿佛在人群中寻找兄弟。十字丝沿着圣经人物摇动，火光笼罩着彩绘的衣服和皮肤。经过油灯和蜡烛几百年的烟熏，衣服和皮肤的颜色已经变得黯淡了。这里现在腾起了火把的黄色油烟，他们知道这对圣殿是无礼的，所以士兵们会被赶出去，而后人则会记得他们得到允许进来参观大厅，却不知爱惜。他们涉水攻下了滩头堡，打了不下一千多场的小仗，轰炸了蒙特卡西诺，然后肃然走过拉菲尔斯坦兹，最后到达这里。十七个人登陆西西里，一路杀到这里——他们却被安置在一个漆黑的大厅里。似乎有个地方就够了。
    有个人说：“山德中士，能否再亮一点?”中士伸手举起火把，伸长手臂，火光从他的拳头四射开来。他在火把燃烧时一直这样站着。其他的人也站着，抬头望着火把照出那些绘在天花板上的形象和面孔。但是年轻的工兵已经仰面躺在地上，举熗瞄准，他的眼睛几乎擦到诺亚、亚伯拉罕和众神的胡子，直到他碰到那张伟大的面孔，于是静下心来，那张脸像矛一样睿智、严厉。  
    卫兵在门口喊叫，他可以听到跑动的脚步，火把还能燃烧三十秒。他翻身起来，把步熗送给神父。“他是谁?西北方三点位置。他是谁?快点，火把快灭了。”
    神父抱起步熗，大步走到墙角，火把灭了。
    他把步熗交还给年轻的锡克教徒。
    “你要知道，在西斯廷礼拜堂⑦燃火持杖，我们可是会遇到麻烦的。我不该到这儿来。但我还是感谢山德中土，佩服他有这样做的勇气。我想没有造成真正的破坏。”
    “你看见了吗?那张面孔。是谁?”
    “啊，看见了，那是一张伟大的面孔。”
    “你看见了?”
    “对。以赛亚。”
    当第八军开往东海岸的加比色时，工兵担任夜间巡逻小队的队长。第二天晚上，他从短波无线电上收到了信号，得知海上发现了敌情。巡逻队发了一炮，击中水面，代表严厉的警告。他们没有击中什么，但是借着炮弹溅起的白色浪花，他看到了一个移动的暗影。他举起步熗，瞄准了足足有一分钟，决定还是不开熗，看看附近是否还有别的动静。敌人仍然驻扎在北面，驻扎在里米尼，就在城边。他的瞄准具捕捉到了那个影子，这时，圣母玛利亚头像周围突然闪出一道光环。她正从海上跃出。
    她站在一条小船中。有两个人划桨，另外两个人扶着她，就在他们抵达海滩时，小镇的人们打开了漆黑的窗户，开始鼓起掌来。
工兵可以看见那张奶油色的脸，以及由蓄电池供电而发光的光环。他躺在水泥掩体上，置身于小镇和大海之间，望着她。这时，四个人爬出小船，抱起了五尺高的石膏像。他们走上海滩，没有因为地雷而停步或犹豫。也许他们看见德军埋设地雷，并把地雷标了出来，他们的脚陷入了沙中。这是加比色海，时间是一九四四年五月二十九日。圣母玛利亚的海祭。
    成人和小孩到了街上。身穿乐队服装的男人们也走了出来。乐队不演奏了，以免破坏宵禁的规定，但是乐器仍是庆典仪式的组成部分，它们被擦得一尘不染。
    他从黑暗处溜走，背后绑着追击炮管，手里拿着步熗。他的包头巾和武器让他们大吃一惊。他们没有料到他也会出现在无人的海滩。
    他端起步熗，从瞄准具里捕捉到她的脸——说不清年龄与性别之分，男人黝黑的手挥舞在她的亮光之中，二十盏小灯泡围绕着优雅的头像。石膏像披着一件淡蓝色的外衣，她的左膝略微抬起，像是刻有衣纹。
    他们不是性格浪漫的人。他们历经了法西斯、高卢人、哥德人和德国人的侵扰。但是这座蓝色与奶黄色相间的石膏像来自海上，被安放在摆满了鲜花、平时载运葡萄的卡车上，乐队默默地在前面开道。不管他应为小镇提供什么保护，都是毫无意义的。他拿着熗，所以不能走在身穿白衣的小孩中间。
    他走过他们南面的一条街道，跟着石膏像移动的速度迈步前进，所以他们同时到达了十字路口。他举起步熗，又透过瞄准具捕捉到她的脸。他们最后来到了俯视大海的海岬，他们放下她，然后回到家中。没有人注意到他在附近。
    她的脸仍被灯照亮。搭船搬她来的四个人坐在附近的一个广场，像卫兵一样。石膏像背后的电池电力开始减弱，红光约在清晨四点三十分熄灭。他又看了一眼手表。他的步熗瞄准具捕捉到了那些人。两个人睡着了。他转动瞄准具，捕捉到她的脸，又端详了她一番。在逐渐消退的灯光中，她看起来又有所不同。黑暗之中的脸看来更像他所认识的某个人。一个姐妹。曾是一个女儿。如果他分身有术，他会在那里留下点什么作为奉献。但是他毕竟有自己的信仰。
    卡拉瓦焦走进书房。大多数的下午他就待在那里。和以往一样，对他来说，书是那么神秘。他取下一本，翻到扉页。他在屋里待了约五分钟，便听到一声轻微的呻吟。
    他转过身，看到哈纳睡在沙发上。他合上书，靠到书架下面高及膝间的壁架。她缩成一团，左脸贴着落满灰尘的织锦，右手臂抬到脸前，拳头顶着下巴。她皱着眉头，尽管睡着了，脸上仍显出聚精会神的神态。
    过了那么长的时间，第一次看到她时，她显得紧张，勉强熬过这一切，她已是筋疲力竭。战争，就像恋情一样，榨干了她全身的精力。
    他低着头打了几声喷嚏，当他抬起头来时，她已醒了，睁开眼睛看着他。
    “猜猜什么时候了?”
    “大概四点零五分。不，四点零七分。”她说。
    这是大人与小孩之间常玩的游戏。他溜出房间去找时钟，看到他的动作和神态，哈纳就知道他刚打了吗啡，精神焕发，带着常有的那份自信。当他回到屋里，摇头赞叹她的猜测非常准确时，她坐了起来，微微一笑。
    “我一生下来脑子里便长了日晷仪，对不对?
    “到了晚上呢?
    “他们有夜晷仪吗?有人发明了夜晷仪吗?也许每个建造别墅的建筑师，都为小偷藏了一个夜晷仪，就像必须缴纳的什么税一样。”
    “这样一来，富人可有得担心的了。”
    “在夜晷仪那边等我，大卫。在那个地方，弱者可以占有强者。”
    “就像英国病人和你吗?”
    “我在一年前差一点生了一个孩子。”
    他服了药，正感到飘飘欲仙，所以她可以使性子，他会待在她的身边，附和她的想法。她敞开心房，并不完全明白她正在与人交谈，仿佛仍在梦中说话，仿佛他的喷嚏是梦中的喷嚏。
    卡拉瓦焦熟悉这种状态。他曾在夜晷仪旁见过他人。在夜里两点打扰过他们，由于出了差错，整个壁橱轰然倒下。他发现惊吓使他们忘了害怕和反抗。见到他所盗那家的主人，他吓了一跳，拍拍双手，疯狂地说着话，往空中扔出一个名贵的钟，又用双手接住，迅速询问他们把东西藏在什么地方。
    “我失去了那个孩子。我是说，我必须拿掉孩子。孩子的父亲已经死了。而战争没有结束。”
    “当时你在意大利吗?”
    “这事发生的时候，我在西西里。我们跟在部队后面到达亚德里亚海边，一路上我一直在考虑这件事。我不停地与孩子谈话。我在医院努力工作，对周围的人保持冷漠。我只与孩子分享一切——在我的心里。当我帮伤员洗澡的时候，当我护理伤员的时候，我是在跟我的他说话。我有些疯狂。”
    “接着你的父亲就死了。”
    “对。接着帕特里克死了。我在比萨时听到了消息。”
她清醒了。坐了起来。
  “你知道，对吗?”
    “我收到了一封家书。”
    “你知道了，所以你就来了这里?”
    “不是。”    
    “好。我不认为他相信守夜这些名堂。帕特里克常说等他死了，他希望能有两个女人为他演奏二重奏——手风琴和小提琴。这就够了。他是那么的多愁善感。”
    “对。其实你让他做什么都行。给他找个悲痛的女人，他就会六神无主。”
    来自山谷的风刮到山上，在小教堂外面三十六级台阶的两旁，柏树随风起舞。雨点落了下来，嘀嘀嗒嗒，打在他们的身上。他们坐在台阶旁的栏杆上。早已过了半夜。她躺在水泥板上，他踱着步，或者探身察看山谷。只有时断时续的雨声。
    “你什么时候开始不再对孩子说话?”
    “一切突然变得太过心乱。部队就要前往莫罗桥打仗，然后开进乌尔比诺。也许在乌尔比诺时，我就不再对孩子说话丁。你感觉到随时会被子弹射死，尽管你不是一名战士，而是神父或护士。那是一个充满混乱的地方，街道狭窄曲折。当兵的进了医院，身体残缺不全。他们爱上了我，然后不到一小时的光景就死了。记住他们的名字很重要。但是在他们死的时候，我总是看见了那个孩子。有些人会一下子坐起来，撕开身上的绷带，挣扎着呼吸。有些人快死的时候，还为手臂的痒处而烦恼。接着嘴里就冒出了唾沫，断了气。我凑近看台上死者的眼睛。他睁开眼睛，冷笑道：‘等不及我死吗?你这个婊子!’他坐了起来，把我盘子上的东西全都推到地上。谁会想那么死呢?带着那样的愤怒死去。你这个婊子!在这事之后，我总是等着他们的嘴里冒出泡沫。我知道死是怎么回事，大卫。我知道所有的气味，我知道如何引导他们脱离痛苦。什么时候往大静脉快速打一针吗啡。食盐水让他们在死前倒空肠胃。每一个该死的将军都应该干我这份工作。每一个该死的将军。这应该是渡河的一个先决条件。到底是谁给了我们这种职责，希望我们像年老的神父一样睿智，知道如何引导人们向往没人想要的东西，还要使他们觉得舒适!我永远都不会相信他们为死者举行的那些仪式，那些庸俗的言词。他们怎能这样!他们怎能那样谈论一个正在死去的人。”
    没有光，灯全部熄了，天空几乎都躲到了云后。不去引起附近住家的注意较为安全。他们习惯摸黑在屋里走动。
    “你知道部队为什么不想让你留在这里，不想让你与那个英国病人一起留下，你知道吗?”
    “是怕出现一桩令人尴尬的婚姻?还是担心我的恋父情结?”她笑着对他说。  
  “那个老家伙呢?”
  “那只狗的事还没让他平静下来。”
  “告诉他，狗跟我走了。”
  “他并不清楚你也住在这里。他以为你也许带着瓷器走了。”
    “你看他会不会想喝点葡萄酒?我今天想办法弄到了一瓶。”
  “从哪儿弄来的?”
  “你想不想喝?”
  “我们现在就喝。别管他了。”
    “啊，这是一大突破!”
    “不是突破。我实在需要好好喝一顿。”
    “二十岁。我在二十岁时……”
    “是，是，也许哪天你可以弄一部留声机来。顺便说一下，我认为这就叫趁火打劫。”
    “我的国家教会了我这一切。我在战争中就为他们干趁火打劫的事。”
    他穿过被炮弹炸毁的小教堂，走进了屋里。
    哈纳坐了起来，感到有些晕眩，身体不太平衡。“看看他们对你干了什么。”她自言自语道。
    在战争期间，即使与同事在一起，她也难得说上一句话。她需要一位叔叔，一个家人。她需要孩子的父亲，她在这个山村等待着，她多年来第一次喝醉了，楼上那个烧伤的人已经睡着了，他一觉可以睡上四个小时，而她父亲的一位老朋友正在她的医疗箱里乱翻，打碎了玻璃，用鞋带束紧手臂，迅速给自己打了一针吗啡。打针的同时，他转过了头。
    夜里，可能到了十点，群山的周围，只有漆黑一片的大地。灰色的天空没有云朵，放眼可见苍绿的山陵。
    “我讨厌挨饿，讨厌成为别人渴望的对象。所以我不和别人约会，不去乘车兜风，拒绝别人的求爱。不肯在他们死前与他们跳舞——大家认为我很势利。我比别人更忙。三班中我轮了两班，在炮火下，为他们料理一切，清理每一个便盆。我成了一个势利的人，因为我不愿出去花他们的钱。我想回家，可是家里已没有人了。我讨厌欧洲。讨厌别人因为我是个女人而把我当成宝贝。我向一个人求了爱，他死了，孩子死了。我是说，孩子不是就这么死了；是我打掉了孩子。后来，我总是走得远远的，不让任何人接近我。不管他们说我有多势利，不管谁死了。然后我遇到了他，那个烧得漆黑的人。结果弄清楚他大概是—个英国人。
    “已经很久了，大卫。我已经很久没想过要和男人交往。”
    基普在别墅周围出没已有一个星期了，他们适应了他的用餐习惯，，不管他在什么地方——或在山上，或在村里——他都会在十二点三—十分左右回来，与哈纳和卡拉瓦焦一起进食。他会从肩上取下—个用蓝色手帕包成的小包，在他们的食物旁边摊开，手帕包着的是他的洋葱和他的草药——卡拉瓦焦怀疑基普是取自圣方济会修道士的花园，他曾在那里清理地雷。他用刀子削下洋葱皮，这把刀他也用来削去引信的橡皮。然后他就吃了起来。卡拉瓦焦怀疑从登陆意大利以后，基普就没有用饭盒吃过饭。
    基普总是天一亮就尽职排队，拿出杯子打算喝他喜爱的英国茶，然后加上—点他自己供应的炼乳。他会慢慢品尝，站在阳光下，望着部队迈步前进，如果哪天军队不需行进，他们在九点的时候便会玩起桥牌。
    现在，到了黎明，他站在伤痕累累的树下，圣吉洛拉莫别墅的花园大半已被炸得面目全：非。他喝了—口饭盒里装的水。他把牙粉撒到牙刷亡，然后若有所思地刷子十分钟的牙。他—边散步，一边俯视笼罩在山雾中的山谷，对这样的景色感到好奇。他现在碰巧生活在这山景中。从小时候开始，刷牙对他来说就向是—种户外活动。
    他周围的景致是短促的，是无常的。他只是闻到灌木丛散发出的味道，便知道可能要下雨了，仿佛他的大脑是雷达，他的眼睛打量周围四分之—公里内无生命物体的舞姿，这个距离是轻武器的射杀半径。他端详着从地里小心拔出的两个洋葱，意识到花园也被撤退的敌军埋下了地雷。
    午餐的时候，卡拉瓦焦以长辈的目光，看了一眼蓝色手帕上的东西。很可能还有什么珍奇动物，卡拉瓦焦心想。他吃的食物与这名年轻的工兵一样。工兵用右手进餐，用手指把食物塞进嘴里。他的刀子只用来削洋葱皮和切洋葱。
    两个人坐上马车去了一趟山谷，弄来一袋面粉。此外，士兵们必须前往设在圣多明尼科的总部，送去地雷业已消除区域的地图。他们发现很难讨论彼此，便只好谈论哈纳。谈了许多的问题；年长者才承认在战争之前就认识她。
    “在加拿大?”
    “对，我在那里认识她的。”
    他们经过了公路两旁数不清的营火，卡拉瓦焦把年轻工兵的注意力引向了它们。工兵的绰号是基普。“找基普。”“基普来了。”这个名字与他密不可分，真是奇怪。在英国起草的第一份炸弹清理报告上沾了一些奶油。那名军官叫道：  “这是什么?基普儿(与腌鲑鱼谐音)油吗?”周围的人哄堂大笑。他并不知道什么是腌鲑鱼，但是年轻的基普从此被人当成是—条英国的咸鱼。在一周之内，他真正的名字基帕尔·辛格被人遗忘了。他对此并不在意。萨福克爵士及其拆弹小组直呼他的绰号，他喜欢这样的叫法，不喜欢英国人用姓氏称呼人的习惯。
    那年夏天，英国病人戴上了助听器，这样他就听见了屋里的一切声响——走廊的椅子擦着地板，狗的爪子在门外抓着。他调大音量，甚至还能听到那只狗喘着粗气，或者听到工兵在阳台上大叫。在年轻的工兵来了几天以后，英国病人就知道他在房子周围，尽管哈纳没有引见他们，认为他们很可能不会彼此喜欢。
    但是有一天，她走进英国人的房间，发现工兵也在里面。他正站在床头，手臂扛着搭在肩上的步熗。她不喜欢他漫不经心持熗的样子，也不喜欢他在她进屋的时候，懒洋洋转身的样子，仿佛他的身子是一个轮子的轴，仿佛他的熗与他的肩膀、手臂和手腕缝在一起。
    英国人转头说道：“我们相处得非常好!”
    她生气了，工兵随随便便就闯入这个地盘，像是包围了她，像是无所不在。
    基普从卡拉瓦焦那里听说英国人熟悉熗支，于是开始跟英国人讨论寻找炸弹的事。他走进房间，发现他对盟军和敌人的武器如数家珍。英国人不仅了解奇怪的意大利引信，而且熟知托斯卡纳这个地区的地形。他们很快就向对方概述了各种炸弹，谈论设计具体线路的理论。
    “意大利引信似乎是垂直设置，而且从来不装在尾部。”
    “呃，这可不一定。那不勒斯制造的炸弹的确如此，但是罗马的兵工厂却采用德国系统。当然了，那不勒斯早在十五世纪……”
    这意味着必须耐心聆听他这样拐弯抹角的说话方式，年轻的工兵却不习惯一声不吭。他会坐立不安，在英国人停顿的时候插话。英国人老是说说停停，试图理清他的思路。那名工兵仰起头，瞪着天花板。
    “我们应该做一个吊架，”工兵若有所思地说，在哈纳进屋时转向了她，“以便抬着他在房子附近走一走。”她看着他们，耸耸肩，然后走出了房间。
    当卡拉瓦焦在走廊上经过她的身边时，她正面带着微笑。他们站在走廊里，听着房间里面的谈话。
    “基普，我跟你讲过维吉尔人的理论吗?让我……”
    “你戴上了助听器吗?”
    “什么?”
    “打开它——”
    “我想他找到了一个朋友。”她对卡拉瓦焦说。
    她步入阳光之中，走到院子里。中午时分，水龙头往别的喷水池送水，二十分钟后，喷水池就会喷出水。她脱下鞋子，爬进干涸的喷水池里，然后等着。
    在这个时候，到处都能闻到干草的气味。矢车菊的花香在空中飘荡，向人的身上扑来，就像是撞到墙上，然后悄然荡开。她注意到水蜘蛛在喷水池上层水槽的下面做窝，她的脸上映着蜘蛛网的阴影。她喜欢坐在这个石砌的摇篮里，可以闻到阴凉的空气，从已断流的喷水口里溢出，就像是晚春时第一次打开地下室，里面的冷空气迎上了外面的热气形成对比。她拍去臂上、脚上和鞋子褶皱上的尘土，然后伸了伸懒腰。
    屋里男人太多。她的嘴巴贴着赤裸的肩膀，闻到皮肤上熟悉的气味——自己的体味。她想起第一次意识到自己身上的味道时，只有十几岁——那似乎是在一个地方，而不是一段时间。她亲吻着自己的前臂，练习亲吻，闻着手腕，或者弯腰闻着大腿。她冲着捧在一起的双手呼气，这样呼吸就反弹进她的鼻子，她那洁白的光脚磨蹭着喷水池色泽斑驳的地方。工兵曾经告诉她，他在打仗时一路见过不少的雕像，他曾睡在一个雕像旁边，那是一个忧伤的天使，半男半女，他觉得它挺美的。他睡在地上，往后挪了挪，打量那个雕像的躯体，在战争期间，他第一次感到平静。
    她嗅着石头，一种凉爽诱人的味道。
    她的父亲是挣扎着还是平静地死去?他曾像英国病人一样体面地躺在行军床上吗?是由陌生人来照顾他吗?一个与你没有血缘关系的人可以听你诉说衷肠，而一个与你有血缘关系的人却不一定做得到。仿佛倒在一个陌生人的怀里，你就能反省自己的抉择正确与否。与工兵不同的是，她的父亲活在这个世界上时从来都不觉得自在。由于害羞，他说话含混不清。她的母亲曾经抱怨说，帕特里克每说一句话，你总会漏掉两三个关键的字。但薀威纳喜欢他这一点，他似乎没有封建思想。由于他的含糊和犹豫，反而形成一种短暂的魅力。他与大多数男人都不相同——甚至连这个英国病人都有那种被人熟悉的封建作风。但是她的父亲是一个饿鬼，像他周围的那些饿鬼一样自信，甚至吵闹。
    他是带着那漫不经心的态度在意外中丧生呢子还是带着愤怒迎向死亡呢?她知道他是一个最不容易动怒的人，如果有人批评罗斯福，或赞扬哪个多伦多市长，他就会走出房间。他一生中从未试着去改变任何人，只是回避或庆祝周围发生的事件。一部小说是一个反映现实的镜子。她曾在一本英国病人推荐的书中读过这句话，这就是她回忆父亲的方式。她会想起点滴的小事，想起她的父亲在半夜把车停在多伦多市波特里以北的某一座桥下，告诉她那里就是椋鸟和鸽子在夜里合住的地方。它们挤在椽木上，既不舒服，又不太愉快。在一个夏夜，他们停在那里，探头聆听吵闹的噪音，和鸟儿昏昏欲睡的啁啾。
    “我听说帕特里克死在一个鸽棚里。”卡拉瓦焦说。
    她父亲热爱自己想象中的城市，那里的街道、墙壁和狭长的花坛，都是他和他的朋友描绘出来的。他从没有真正踏个世界。她明白她对这个真实世界所有的了解来自她自己或卡拉瓦焦，或者她的继母克莱拉——当他们在一起生活时，克莱拉曾经当过演员，能说善道。见到他们都去参战，她发了很大的火。去年在意大利时，她一直带着克莱拉寄来的信。她知道信是在乔治亚湾一个小岛上的一块粉红色岩石上写的，克莱拉顶着海上刮来的风写信，风吹皱了纸张。写完以后，克莱拉撕下信纸，塞进信封寄给哈纳。哈纳把信装进手提箱里。每一封信都装有一小块粉红色的石头，可以闻到海风的气息。但是她从来没有回过信。她思念克莱拉，带着一丝忧伤，但是在经历了这些事之后，她已无法给克莱拉写信了。她无法谈论，或者承认帕特里克死了。
    现在，在欧洲大陆，战争已经推进到别处，远离了托斯卡纳及翁布里亚山区里的修道院和教堂，这些地方一度被当作医院?如今又重新陷入孤寂。他们守着战争的遗迹，巨大的冰川留下的小冰碛。他们周围只剩下那片神圣的森林。
    她把双脚缩进单薄的裙子里，手臂抱在大腿上。—切是那么安静。她听到了熟悉的、空洞的水流声，流水在埋在喷水池柱下的水管里急着往外淌。然后是一片沉寂。接着水哗啦啦流了出来，溅落在她的四周。
    哈纳为英国病人读书，他们与《吉姆》中的老流浪汉，或《巴马修道院》中的法布利斯一起游历，陶醉其中。东征西讨的大军、战马和战车，或逃离战场，或奔赴战场。卧室的一角堆着她给他读过的书，他们已经游历了书中描绘的天地。
    大多数的作者在一开始就阐明书中的要点。有本书在他们心中激起了一圈小涟漪。
    我的故事始自加尔巴担任执政官时。
    ……提比略、卡利古拉、克劳狄和尼禄当权的时候，史学家们心存恐惧，篡改了他们的历史；而在他们死后，史学家们怀着萌发的仇恨重写历史。
    塔西佗就这样开始写作他的《编年史》。
    但是小说的内容却是随着犹疑或混乱展开，读者在阅读过程中难以保持平衡。一扇门、一把锁、一道堰打开了，他们冲了进去，一手抓住舷边，一手抓住礼帽。
    当她开始读一本书时，她就穿过高高的门道，走进大院里。帕尔马、巴黎和印度铺开了它们的地毯。    
    他无视市政府的命令，骑在参参玛大炮上，它那砖砌的炮台位于古老的“阿贾巴——格尔”——奇迹之家，这是当地人对拉合尔博物馆的称呼——对面。谁掌握了参参玛大炮这个“喷火龙”，谁就掌握了旁遮昔，因为那个绿铜大炮总是率先成为征服者的战利品。
    “读慢点，亲爱的小姐，你应该慢慢地读吉卜林的书。留意逗号，这样你就能发现自然停顿的地方，他是一个用笔墨创作的作家。我相信他总是从稿纸上抬起头，眺望窗外，聆听鸟儿的歌唱，大多数作家独处的时候都会这样。有些人不知道鸟儿的名字，但他知道。你的眼睛看得太快，难怪你是北美人。
要考虑到他的运笔速度，否则第一段听来会显得可怕而凝重。”
    这是英国病人就阅读所上的第一课。他没有再打断她。如果他碰巧睡着了，她会继续读下去，不再抬头，直到她自己累了。如果他会漏掉最后半个小时的情节，很可能是他已经知道那薀褪事中较为阴暗悲惨的一部分。他对故事里的地理分布了如指掌。贝拿勒斯在东边．，奇利安瓦拉在旁遮普以北。(这是在工兵进入他们的生活之前所发生的事，小说中的情节仿佛跃出了书外，仿佛吉卜林的书在晚上被擦过，就像一盏神灯，一剂灵丹妙药。)    
    她读完了《吉姆》，告别了那些细致、神圣的文句——那文句已变成清晰的话语——然后拿起病人的笔记本，那是病人在火中好不容易救出来的。笔记本已经散了，厚度已是原来的两倍。
    书上贴着一页薄薄的圣经。
    大卫王年纪老迈，虽然盖得很密实，仍不觉得暖。
    所以臣仆对他说：“不如为我主我王寻找一个处女，使她伺候王，奉养王，睡在王的怀中，好叫我主我王得暖。”
    于是，在以色列全境寻找美貌的童女，寻得一个女子阿彼沙，就带到王那里。这童女极其美貌，她奉养王，伺候王，王却没有与她亲近。
    那个部落救了烧伤的飞行员，在一九四四年把他送到英国锡瓦基地，他坐上运送伤员的夜班火车，从西部沙漠到了突尼斯，然后搭船到了意大利。在战争期间，成千上百的士兵不知道自己的身分，与其说是耍什么手段，倒不如说真是如此，那些声称不清楚自己国籍的人，被收容在蒂伦尼亚的海边医院里。这位烧伤的飞行员又是一个谜，没有证件，无法辨认。在附近的监狱里，他们囚禁了美国诗人庞德。他在身上和口袋里藏了油加利树的叶子，带着叶子每天走动，  自以为安然无恙。树叶是他在叛徒的花园里摘的，他在那里被抓了起来。
“纪念用的油加利树。”    
    “你们应该设法套我的话，”烧伤的飞行员告诉审问他的人，“让我说德语，顺便告诉你，我会说德语。问我唐·布拉德曼，问我马麦特调味晶，问我伟大的格特鲁德·杰基尔。”
他知道乔托的每一幅画都在欧洲，知道大多数可以发现那些几可乱真、以视幻觉法固绘出的作品的地方。
     海边医院的房子原先是海滩的淋浴小屋，游客在本世纪初曾经租用它们。天气热的时候，旧的太阳伞再次被插在桌子的洞里，那些轻伤、重伤和昏迷的人会坐在伞下，沐浴着海风，慢慢地聊天，或者大眼瞪小眼，或者一直说个没完。那个烧伤的人注意到了那个年轻的护士，她不与别人待在一起。他熟悉这种没有生气的眼光，知道她特别有耐心。他在需要什么东西时，才会与她说话。
    他又受到了盘问。他的一切都说明他是一个英国人，只是他的皮肤像焦油一样黑。在盘问他的军官们看来，他是一个历史怪物。
    他们问他盟军到了意大利的什么地方，他说他估计他脽庭占了佛罗伦萨，但在北面的山区受阻——哥德防线。“你们的师陷在佛罗伦萨，无法通过像普拉托和菲埃索莱这样的基地，因为德国人驻扎在别墅和女修道院里，并且顽强抵抗。这是一个古老的故事——十字军与萨拉森人作战时犯下了同样的错误。像他们一样，你们需要位于军事要地的小街。它们从未被弃守，除非是在霍乱流行的时候。”
    他讲个不停，搞得他们发狂，他们始终没有弄懂他到底是叛徒还是盟友。
    现在，在佛罗伦萨以北的山镇，在圣吉洛拉莫别墅住了几个月后，在绘了树林的卧室里，他卧床休养，像拉韦纳那位已故骑士的雕像。他断断续续，谈起绿洲小镇、末代的麦迪奇家族、吉卜林的文笔、和咬破他皮肤的那个女人。在他那本札记里，他那本一八九O年版的希罗多德《历史》也是断断续续——地图、日记、用多种语言写的笔记，和从别的书上剪下的段落。所缺的是他的名字。没有线索可以判断他到底是谁，无名无姓，没有军衔，也不知道军营或编队。他书中记录的全是战前的事，三十年代的埃及和利比亚沙漠，中间插有他写的蝇头小字，介绍岩洞壁画和画廊艺术，以及游记。“佛罗伦萨没有浅黑色头发的女郎。”当哈纳弯下身时，英国病人对她说。
    那本书就在他的手里。看见他睡着了，她拿走了书，随手放在床头柜上。她没有把书合上，站在那里低�

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IV

South Cairo 1930-1938

THERE is, after Herodotus, little interest by the Western world towards the desert for hundreds of years. From 425 B.C. to the
beginning of the twentieth century there is an averting of eyes. Silence. The nineteenth century was an age of river seekers.
And then in the 19205 there is a sweet postscript history on this pocket of earth, made mostly by privately funded expeditions
and followed by modest lectures given at the Geographical Society in London at Kensington Gore. These lectures are given by
sunburned, exhausted men who, like Conrad’s sailors, are not too comfortable with the etiquette of taxis, the quick, flat wit of
bus conductors.

When they travel by local trains from the suburbs towards Knightsbridge on their way to Society meetings, they are often
lost, tickets misplaced, clinging only to their old maps and carrying their lecture notes—which were slowly and painfully
written—in their ever present knapsacks which will always be a part of their bodies. These men of all nations travel at that
early evening hour, six o’clock, when there is the light of the solitary. It is an anonymous time, most of the city is going home.
The explorers arrive too early at Kensington Gore, eat at the Lyons Corner House and then enter the Geographical Society,
where they sit in the upstairs hall next to the large Maori canoe, going over their notes. At eight o’clock the talks begin.

Every other week there is a lecture. Someone will introduce the talk and someone will give thanks. The concluding speaker
usually argues or tests the lecture for hard currency, is pertinently critical but never impertinent. The main speakers, everyone
assumes, stay close to the facts, and even obsessive assumptions are presented modestly.

My journey through the Libyan Desert from Sokum on the Mediterranean to El Obeid in the Sudan was made over one of the
few tracks of the earth’s surface which present a number and variety of interesting geographical problems....

The years of preparation and research and fund-raising are never mentioned in these oak rooms. The previous week’s
lecturer recorded the loss of thirty people in ice in Antarctica. Similar losses in extreme heat or windstorm are announced with
minimal eulogy. All human and financial behaviour lies on the far side of the issue being discussed—which is the earth’s
surface and its “interesting geographical problems.”

Can other depressions in this region, besides the much-discussed Wadi Rayan, be considered possible of utilization in
connection with irrigation or drainage of the Nile Delta? Are the artesian water supplies of the oases gradually diminishing?
Where shall we look for the mysterious “Zerzura”? Are there any other “lost” oases remaining to be discovered? Where are
the tortoise marshes of Ptolemy?

John Bell, director of Desert Surveys in Egypt, asked these questions in 1927. By the 19305 the papers grew even more
modest. “/ should like to add a few remarks on some of the points raised in the interesting discussion on the ‘Prehistoric
Geography of Kharga Oasis.’ “ By the mid-19305 the lost oasis of Zerzura was found by Ladislaus de Almasy and his
companions.

In 1939 the great decade of Libyan Desert expeditions came to an end, and this vast and silent pocket of the earth became
one of the theatres of war.

In the arboured bedroom the burned patient views great distances. The way that dead knight in Ravenna, whose marble body
seems alive, almost liquid, has his head raised upon a stone pillow, so it can gaze beyond his feet into vista. Farther than the
desired rain of Africa. Towards all their lives in Cairo. Their works and days.

Hana sits by his bed, and she travels like a squire beside him during these journeys.

In 1930 we had begun mapping the greater part of the Gilf Kebir Plateau, looking for the lost oasis that was called Zerzura.
The City of Acacias.

We were desert Europeans. John Bell had sighted the Gilf in 1917. Then Kemal el Din. Then Bagnold, who found his way
south into the Sand Sea. Madox, Walpole of Desert Surveys, His Excellency Wasfi Bey, Casparius the photographer, Dr.
Kadar the geologist and Bermann. And the Gilf Kebir— that large plateau resting in the Libyan Desert, the size of Switzerland,
as Madox liked to say—was our heart, its escarpments precipitous to the east and west, the plateau sloping gradually to the
north. It rose out of the desert four hundred miles west of the Nile.

For the early Egyptians there was supposedly no water west of the oasis towns. The world ended out there. The interior was
waterless. But in the emptiness of deserts you are always surrounded by lost history. Tebu and Senussi tribes had roamed there
possessing wells that they guarded with great secrecy. There were rumours of fertile lands that nestled within the desert’s
interior. Arab writers in the thirteenth century spoke of Zerzura. “The Oasis of Little Birds.” “The City of Acacias.” In The
Book of Hidden Treasures, the Kitab al Kanuz, Zerzura is depicted as a white city, “white as a dove.”

Look at a map of the Libyan Desert and you will see names. Kemal el Din in 1925, who, almost solitary, carried out the first
great modern expedition. Bagnold 1930-1932. Almasy-Madox 1931-1937. Just north of the Tropic of Cancer.

We were a small clutch of a nation between the wars, mapping and re-exploring. We gathered at Dakhla and Kufra as if they
were bars or cafes. An oasis society, Bagnold called it. We knew each other’s intimacies, each other’s skills and weaknesses.
We forgave Bagnold everything for the way he wrote about dunes. “The grooves and the corrugated sand resemble the hollow
of the roof of a dog’s mouth.” That was the real Bagnold, a man who would put his inquiring hand into the jaws of a dog.

1930. Our first journey, moving south from Jaghbub into the desert among the preserve of Zwaya and Majabra’s tribes. A
seven-day journey to El Taj. Madox and Bermann, four others. Some camels a horse and a dog. As we left they told us the old
joke. “To start a journey in a sandstorm is good luck.”

We camped the first night twenty miles south. The next morning we woke and came out of our tents at five. Too cold to
sleep. We stepped towards the fires and sat in their light in the larger darkness. Above us were the last stars. There would be no
sunrise for another two hours. We passed around hot glasses of tea. The camels were being fed, half asleep, chewing the dates
along with the date stones. We ate breakfast and then drank three more glasses of tea.

Hours later we were in the sandstorm that hit us out of clear morning, coming from nowhere. The breeze that had been
refreshing had gradually strengthened. Eventually we looked down, and the surface of the desert was changed. Pass me the
book... here. This is Hassanein Bey’s wonderful account of such storms—

“It is as though the surface were underlaid with steam-pipes, with thousands of orifices through which tiny jets of steam are
puffing out. The sand leaps in little spurts and whirls. Inch by inch the disturbance rises as the wind increases its force. It
seems as though the whole surface of the desert were rising in obedience to some upthrusting force beneath. Larger pebbles
strike against the shins, the knees, the thighs. The sand-grains climb the body till it strikes the face and goes over the head. The
sky is shut out, all but the nearest objects fade from view, the universe is filled.”

We had to keep moving. If you pause sand builds up as it would around anything stationary, and locks you in. You are lost
forever. A sandstorm can last five hours. Even when we were in trucks in later years we would have to keep driving with no
vision. The worst terrors came at night. Once, north of Kufra, we were hit by a storm in the darkness. Three a.m. The gale
swept the tents from their moorings and we rolled with them, taking in sand like a sinking boat takes in water, weighed down,
suffocating, till we were cut free by a camel driver.

We travelled through three storms during nine days. We missed small desert towns where we expected to locate more
supplies. The horse vanished. Three of the camels died. For the last two days there was no food, only tea. The last link with
any other world was the clink of the fire-black tea urn and the long spoon and the glass which came towards us in the darkness
of the mornings. After the third night we gave up talking. All that mattered was the fire and the minimal brown liquid.

Only by luck did we stumble on the desert town of El Taj. I walked through the souk, the alley of clocks chiming, into the
street of barometers, past the rifle-cartridge stalls, stands of Italian tomato sauce and other tinned food from Benghazi, calico
from Egypt, ostrich-tail decorations, street dentists, book merchants. We were still mute, each of us dispersing along our own
paths. We received this new world slowly, as if coming out of a drowning. In the central square of El Taj we sat and ate lamb,
rice, badawi cakes, and drank milk with almond pulp beaten into it. All this after the long wait for three ceremonial glasses of
tea flavoured with amber and mint.

Sometime in 1931 I joined a Bedouin caravan and was told there was another one of us there. Fenelon-Barnes, it turned out.
I went to his tent. He was out for the day on some small expedition, cataloguing fossil trees. I looked around his tent, the sheaf
of maps, the photos he always carried of his family, et cetera. As I was leaving I saw a mirror tacked up high against the skin
wall, and looking at it I saw the reflection of the bed. There seemed to be a small lump, a dog possibly, under the covers. I
pulled back the djellaba and there was a small Arab girl tied up, sleeping there.

By 1932, Bagnold was finished and Madox and the rest of us were everywhere. Looking for the lost army of Cambyses.
Looking for Zerzura. 1932 and 1933 and 1934. Not seeing each other for months. Just the Bedouin and us, crisscrossing the
Forty Days Road. There were rivers of desert tribes, the most beautiful humans I’ve met in my life. We were German, English,
Hungarian, African—all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed
by nation-states. Madox died because of nations.

The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a
hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East. Its
caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European
homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into
landscape. Fire and sand. We left the harbours of oasis. The places water came to and touched... Ain, Bir, Wadi, Foggara,
Khottara, Shaduf. I didn’t want my name against such beautiful names. Erase the family name! Erase nations! I was taught
such things by the desert.

Still, some wanted their mark there. On that dry watercourse, on this shingled knoll. Small vanities in this plot of land
northwest of the Sudan, south of Cyrenaica. Fenelon-Barnes wanted the fossil trees he discovered to bear his name. He even
wanted a tribe to take his name, and spent a year on the negotiations. Then Bauchan outdid him, having a type of sand dune
named after him. But I wanted to erase my name and the place I had come from. By the time war arrived, after ten years in the
desert, it was easy for me to slip across borders, not to belong to anyone, to any nation.

1933 or 1934. I forget the year. Madox, Casparius, Ber-mann, myself, two Sudanese drivers and a cook. By now we travel in
A-type Ford cars with box bodies and are using for the first time large balloon tires known as air wheels. They ride better on
sand, but the gamble is whether they will stand up to stone fields and splinter rocks.

We leave Kharga on March 22. Bermann and I have theorized that three wadis written about by Williamson in 1838 make up
Zerzura.

Southwest of the Gilf Kebir are three isolated granite massifs rising out of the plain—Gebel Arkanu, Gebel Uweinat, and
Gebel Kissu. The three are fifteen miles apart from each other. Good water in several of the ravines, though the wells at Gebel
Arkanu are bitter, not drinkable except in an emergency. Williamson said three wadis formed Zerzura, but he never located
them and this is considered fable. Yet even one rain oasis in these crater-shaped hills would solve the riddle of how Cambyses
and his army could attempt to cross such a desert, of the Senussi raids during the Great War, when the black giant raiders
crossed a desert which supposedly has no water or pasture. This was a world that had been civilised for centuries, had a
thousand paths and roads.

We find jars at Abu Ballas with the classic Greek amphora shape. Herodotus speaks of such jars.

Bermann and I talk to a snakelike mysterious old man in the fortress of El Jof—in the stone hall that once had been the
library of the great Senussi sheik. An old Tebu, a caravan guide by profession, speaking accented Arabic. Later Bermann says
“like the screeching of bats,” quoting Herodotus. We talk to him all day, all night, and he gives nothing away. The Senussi
creed, their foremost doctrine, is still not to reveal the secrets of the desert to strangers.

At Wadi el Melik we see birds of an unknown species.

On May 5, I climb a stone cliff and approach the Uweinat plateau from a new direction. I find myself in a broad wadi full of
acacia trees.

There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.
Someone seen bathing in a desert caravan, holding up muslin with one arm in front of her. Some old Arab poet’s woman,
whose white-dove shoulders made him describe an oasis with her name. The skin bucket spreads water over her, she wraps
herself in the cloth, and the old scribe turns from her to describe Zerzura.

So a man in the desert can slip into a name as if within a discovered well, and in its shadowed coolness be tempted never to
leave such containment. My great desire was to remain there, among those acacias. I was walking not in a place where no one
had walked before but in a place where there were sudden, brief populations over the centuries—a fourteenth-century army, a
Tebu caravan, the Senussi raiders of 1915. And in between these times—nothing was there. When no rain fell the acacias
withered, the wadis dried out... until water suddenly reappeared fifty or a hundred years later. Sporadic appearances and
disappearances, like legends and rumours through history.

In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover’s name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows
absence. A woman in Cairo curves the white length of her body up from the bed and leans out of the window into a rainstorm
to allow her nakedness to receive it.

Hana leans forward, sensing his drifting, watching him, not saying a word. Who is she, this woman?

The ends of the earth are never the points on a map that colonists push against, enlarging their sphere of influence. On one
side servants and slaves and tides of power and correspondence with the Geographical Society. On the other the first step by a
white man across a great river, the first sight (by a white eye) of a mountain that has been there forever.

When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives
will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the
cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.

But we were interested in how our lives could mean something to the past. We sailed into the past. We were young. We
knew power and great finance were temporary things. We all slept with Herodotus. “For those cities that were great in earlier
times must have now become small, and those that were great in my time were small in the time before.... Man’s good fortune
never abides in the same place.”

In 1936 a young man named Geoffrey Clifton had met a friend at Oxford who mentioned what we were doing. He contacted
me, got married the next day, and two weeks later flew with his wife to Cairo.

The couple entered our world—the four of us, Prince Kemal el Din, Bell, Almasy and Madox. The name that still filled our
mouths was Gilf Kebir. Somewhere in the Gilf nestled Zerzura, whose name occurs in Arab writings as far back as the
thirteenth century. When you travel that far in time you need a plane, and young Clifton was rich and he could fly and he had a
plane.

Clifton met us in El Jof, north of Uweinat. He sat in his two-seater plane and we walked towards him from the base camp.
He stood up in the cockpit and poured a drink out of his flask. His new wife sat beside him.

“I name this site the Bir Messaha Country Club,” he announced.

I watched the friendly uncertainty scattered across his wife’s face, her lionlike hair when she pulled off the leather helmet.

They were youth, felt like our children. They climbed out of the plane and shook hands with us.

That was 1936, the beginning of our story....

They jumped off the wing of the Moth. Clifton walked towards us holding out the flask, and we all sipped the warm alcohol.
He was one for ceremonies. He had named his plane Rupert Bear. I don’t think he loved the desert, but he had an affection for
it that grew out of awe at our stark order, into which he wanted to fit himself—like a joyous undergraduate who respects silent
behaviour in a library. We had not expected him to bring his wife, but we were I suppose courteous about it. She stood there
while the sand collected in her mane of hair.

What were we to this young couple? Some of us had written books about dune formation, the disappearance and reappearance
of oases, the lost culture of deserts. We seemed to be interested only in things that could not be bought or sold, of no
interest to the outside world. We argued about latitudes, or about an event that had happened seven hundred years earlier. The
theorems of exploration. That Abd el Melik Ibra-him el Zwaya who lived in Zuck oasis pasturing camels was the first man
among those tribes who could understand the concept of photographs.

The Cliftons were on the last days of their honeymoon. I left them with the others and went to join a man in Kufra and spent
many days with him, trying out theories I had kept secret from the rest of the expedition. I returned to the base camp at El Jof
three nights later.

The desert fire was between us. The Cliftons, Madox, Bell and myself. If a man leaned back a few inches he would dis
appear into darkness. Katharine Clifton began to recite something, and my head was no longer in the halo of the camp’s twig
fire.

There was classical blood in her face. Her parents were famous, apparently, in the world of legal history. I am a man who did
not enjoy poetry until I heard a woman recite it to us.

And in that desert she dragged her university days into our midst to describe the stars—the way Adam tenderly taught a
woman with gracious metaphors.

These then, though unbeheld in deep of night,

Shine not in vain, nor think, though men were none,

That Heav’n would want spectators, God want praise;

Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth

Unseen, both when we -wake, and when we sleep:

All these with ceaseless praise his works behold

Both day and night: how often from the steep

Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard

Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive each to other’s note

Singing their great Creator...

That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice. I wanted to hear nothing more. I got up and walked away.

She was a willow. What would she be like in winter, at my age? I see her still, always, with the eye of Adam. She had been
these awkward limbs climbing out of a plane, bending down in our midst to prod at a fire, her elbow up and pointed towards
me as she drank from a canteen.

A few months later, she waltzed with me, as we danced as a group in Cairo. Though slightly drunk she wore an unconquerable
face. Even now the face I believe that most revealed her was the one she had that time when we were both half drunk,
not lovers.

All these years I have been trying to unearth what she was handing me with that look. It seemed to be contempt. So it
appeared to me. Now I think she was studying me. She was an innocent, surprised at something in me. I was behaving the way
I usually behave in bars, but this time with the wrong company. I am a man who kept the codes of my behaviour separate. I
was forgetting she was younger than I.

She was studying me. Such a simple thing. And I was watching for one wrong move in her statue-like gaze, something that
would give her away.

Give me a map and I’ll build you a city. Give me a pencil and I will draw you a room in South Cairo, desert charts on the
wall. Always the desert was among us. I could wake and raise my eyes to the map of old settlements along the Mediterranean
coast—Gazala, Tobruk, Mersa Matruh—and south of that the hand-painted wadis, and surrounding those the shades of
yellowness that we invaded, tried to lose ourselves in. “My task is to describe briefly the several expeditions which have
attacked the Gilf Kebir. Dr. Bermann will later take us back to the desert as it existed thousands of years ago...”

That is the way Madox spoke to other geographers at Kensington Gore. But you do not find adultery in the minutes of the
Geographical Society. Our room never appears in the detailed reports which chartered every knoll and every incident of
history.

In the street of imported parrots in Cairo one is hectored by almost articulate birds. The birds bark and whistle in rows, like a
plumed avenue. I knew which tribe had travelled which silk or camel road carrying them in their petite palanquins across the
deserts. Forty-day journeys, after the birds were caught by slaves or picked like flowers in equatorial gardens and then placed
in bamboo cages to enter the river that is trade. They appeared like brides in a mediaeval courtship.

We stood among them. I was showing her a city that was new to her.

Her hand touched me at the wrist.

“If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
4.开罗南部  一九三○年至一九三八年
    仕希罗多德之后，几百年来，西方世界的人对沙漠一直没有多大兴趣，从公元前四二五年到二十世纪初，人们的看法才慢慢地有所改变。十九世纪是个河流探寻者的时代。而后到
一九二○年，又出现一部引人人胜的后继史书，来介绍地球上的这一地区。这部历史的内容大部分得自私人资助的勘探，而后地理协会在伦敦肯辛顿区举办的演讲又丰富了它的内容。演讲者皮肤晒得黑黝黝的，满脸疲惫，看起来就像康拉德小说里的水手。他们对出租车司机的彬彬有礼和公车查票员敏捷无味的幽默机智不太习惯。
    在他们搭乘当地火车从近郊到骑士桥去出席协会会议的路上，经常迷路或找不到车。他们只是紧紧地抱住他们的破地图，背包里面放着他们字斟句酌，费劲写好的讲稿，那背包常被看作是他们身体的一部分。这些来自各国的人士早在晚上六点钟便出发了，当时只有孤零零的一盏灯。这是一个百无聊赖的时间。城市中大多数人都回家了。探险家们到达肯辛顿区的时间太早了，他们在莱昂街角餐厅吃了饭，然后进入地理协会，坐在楼上走廊一艘毛利人的大独木舟旁边，复习着他们的讲稿。八点钟，发言开始了。
    每个星期都有一场演讲。有人介绍发言内容，有人表示感谢。作总结的人常常会争辩，论证发言内容和观点。这些人爱批评论断，可是从来不会无理取闹。每个人都相信主要发言者的陈述忠于事实，就算有任何大胆的假设，大家也会平静地提出来讨论。
    我的旅行，从地中海的索卡姆开始，穿过利比亚沙漠，到达苏丹的埃尔欧贝德，是沿着地面的一些踪迹走的，这些踪迹显示出许多有趣的地理问题……
    在这间橡木屋子里，人们从未谈论年复一年的准备研究及基金的募集。上周的演讲者陈述了在南极大陆的雪地中失去三十人的消息。同样地，在宣布沙漠中和风暴里的人员损失时，
大家也并未大肆歌功颂德。人力和财力的问题很少会纳入讨论的范围。目前讨论的问题是地球表面和它“有趣的地理问题”。
    除了已多次讨论过的赖延河道，尼罗河三角洲的灌溉和排水是否还有可能利用这个地区的其它洼地来进行?供给这些绿洲的自流水会渐渐减少吗?我们到哪里去寻找神奇的“泽祖拉”?是否有其它“失落”的绿洲会被发现?托勒密的龟类沼泽在哪里?
    埃及“国际沙漠勘探协会”的约翰·贝尔于一九二七年提出这些问题。到了二十世纪三十年代，报纸的用词变得谦虚了。“对于哈尔绿洲的史前地理所引起的有趣讨论，我想补充一点意见。”到了三十年代中期，失落的泽祖拉绿洲被拉斯洛·奥尔马希和他的勘探队队员们找到了。    
利比亚沙漠的勘探十年来成就非凡，却不得不在一九三九年告终，地球上这块广阔宁静的土地变成了战场。
    在树木围绕的卧室里，烧伤的病人凝视着远方，就像拉韦纳那个死去的骑士一样，他的大理石雕像栩栩如生，身躯几乎显出温润之感，那骑士仿佛从石枕上抬起头，凝视着脚下的远景。英国病人想得很远。他想到的不只是非洲令人渴望的甘霖，他还想到他们在开罗的生活，还有他们的工作和所有的一切。
    哈纳坐在他的床边，像个侍女一样待在他的身边，随着他的思绪，像他一样遨游远方。“一九三O年，我们已开始绘制基尔夫·克尔比尔高地更重要的部分，寻找着那块叫作泽祖拉的绿洲——刺槐之城。
    “我们是来自欧洲的沙漠人。约翰·贝尔曾于一九一七年发现了基尔夫，之后是凯摩尔·艾尔·丁。再往后是巴格诺尔德，他曾发现了向南通往沙海的道路。然后是马多克斯、国际沙漠勘探协会的沃尔波、瓦斯非·贝阁下、摄影师加斯巴利厄斯、地质学家卡达尔博土和伯曼。而基尔夫·克尔比尔——那沉睡在利比亚沙漠中的广大高地，据马多克斯说，有瑞士那么大——是我们的心脏，它的悬崖峭壁从东到西都是陡峭的，高地渐渐地向北倾斜。它突出于尼罗河西部四百里外的沙漠之中。
    “早期埃及人推测在这些绿洲小镇的西边是没有水的，那儿是世界的尽头。整片内陆均是无水之境。但是，在这片沙漠中，不知流传着多少失落的历史。德布和塞努西的部落在此徜徉，守护着他们的水井，不让外人知道。传说沙漠里有着肥沃的土地。十三世纪的阿拉伯作家说到泽祖拉，说它是‘小鸟的绿洲’、‘刺槐之城’，在《藏宝书》中，小鸟的绿洲被描绘成一座白色的城市——像鸽子一样洁白。
“看看利比亚沙漠的地图，你可以看到这些名字，凯摩尔·艾尔·丁于一九二五年，几乎是独自进行了首次伟大的现代化探索，巴格诺尔德从一九三○年到一九三二年，奥尔马希和马多克斯从一九三一年到一九三七年，仅到了北回归线北部。
    “我们这一小群人，身处在战火中的异国，不断地绘制地图和重新勘探。我们聚集在达卡拉和库法，好像那儿就是酒吧或咖啡馆。一个绿洲协会——巴格诺尔德就是这样称呼它的。我们彼此熟悉，知道彼此的能力和弱点。我们原谅巴格诺尔德所写的那些乱七八糟的东西。‘沟壑和沙脊就像狗嘴上的皮毛一样。’这就是真正的巴格诺尔德，他就是这样一个人，他探索的手甚至会伸向狗的下巴。
    “一九三○年，我们首次勘探，向南从加格布进入沙漠，沿着祖耶和马加布拉人的区域走。要花七天的时间才能到厄塔吉。除了马多克斯和伯曼外，还有另外四位成员，几匹骆驼，
一匹马和一条狗。我们离开时，他们和我们开了个老玩笑。在沙暴中出发旅行会有好运气。
    “第一夜我们宿营在南部二十里的地方。第二天清晨五点，我们醒来，走出帐篷。天气太冷了，无法人眠。我们向营火走去，坐在火光前，周围一片漆黑，头顶上的天空点缀着袩外。距离日出至少还要两个小时。我们传递着热茶。骆驼已经喂过了，半睡半醒，正咀嚼着枣子，连枣核也嚼烂了。我们用了早餐，又多喝了三杯茶。
    “几个小时后，遇上了沙暴，在晴朗的早晨，沙暴突然无情地扑向我们。原先清新的和风，此刻逐渐变得强劲。后来我们向下望去，沙漠的表面改变了。给我这本书……这儿。这薀威赛因·贝对这类沙暴的描绘——
    ‘地表下好像布满了蒸汽管，无数的管中都喷着蒸汽。沙尘跳跃着，旋转着，随着风势加强，沙尘肆虐更甚。好像沙漠的整个表面正听凭一股推动的力量向上抬起。偌大的卵石碰击着人的胫骨、膝盖和大腿。沙粒铺天盖地地打在人们的脸上和头上。天空一片乌黑，所有的景物，除了身边的物体一切都看不见了，天地万物间充满了沙砾。’
    “我们必须继续前进。如果你稍一犹豫，沙子便会在你周围形成一个固定的障碍物，把你困在里面，你就会永远消失了。一场沙暴可持续五个钟头。甚至数年后，当我们的汽车在
沙漠里行驶时，遇到沙暴也不得不盲目地继续行驶。最可怕的情况往往发生在晚上。有一次在库法北部，我们在黑夜中遭到风暴的袭击。凌晨三点钟，大风把固定帐篷的缆绳吹断，我脽忘着帐篷被一起吹走，沉入沙漠。就像小船沉入水里一样，我们被压在底下，感到窒息，直到十一位赶骆驼的人解救了我们。    
    “我们在九天的旅行中遭遇了三次沙暴。我们找不到能够提供补给品的沙漠小镇。马丢了，有三匹骆驼死了。最后两天我们除了茶，已经没有任何食物了，与其它世界的最后联系，声。第三夜之后，我们连话都不说了。所有的东西都不见了，只剩下一堆火和一点点褐色的液体。
    惟一值得庆幸的是，我们碰巧到了沙漠小镇厄塔吉。我走过露天市场，穿过传出钟响的小巷，走过有气压计的大街，路过了卖步熗子弹的摊位，经过了卖意大利蕃茄酱和罐头的摊位，蕃茄酱和罐头都是从班加西运来的。有卖埃及白棉布、鸵鸟尾饰品的摊位，还有街头牙医和书商的摊子。我们仍然保持沉默。一路上我们零零落落地走着，我们要慢慢接受这个新世界——就像溺水的人刚刚死里逃生。我们坐在厄塔吉的中心广场，吃着小羊肉、米饭，喝着加了碎杏仁的牛奶。按照当地的礼仪，这些是在等了很久、喝了三杯放了薄荷香料的茶之后才吃到的。
“一九三一年，我偶尔参加贝都因人的旅行队，人们告诉我还有一个像我这样的人在他们队里，后来知道那是芬纳龙·巴恩思。我到他的帐篷去，他这天正巧出去做一些研究，替树木化石编目录。我环视他的帐篷，看见捆着的地图卷和他时常带在身边的家人照片等等。当我正要离去时，我看见皮墙上方有一面镜子，从镜子里，我看到了那张床。被子下好像有一团东西，也许是条狗。我一把拉开那件阿拉伯带帽斗篷，一个阿拉伯小姑娘被捆着，睡在那里。
    “到了一九三二年，巴格诺尔德完成了他的研究工作，而马多克斯和其余成员分散到四处，寻找冈比西斯的失踪军队，寻找泽祖拉。一九三二、一九三三年和一九三四年都过去了，有几个月的时间互相没有见面。只有贝都因人和我们在四十天的路程上往返奔波。那儿有沙漠部落的河流，那儿有我今生所遇见最美丽的人们。我们是德国人、英国人、匈牙利人、非洲人——我们对他们来说都是微不足道的。渐渐地，我们变成了没有国籍的人。我开始憎恨国家。国家与疆域似乎使我们变得畸形。马多克斯就是因国家而死的。
    “没有人能对沙漠予取予求或拥有它——它是风披的一件衣裳，从不会被石头镇住，早在坎特伯雷存在之前，便被赋予了上百个不断变化的名字，远在欧洲与东方战争签定条约之前便存在了。它的旅行队，那奇怪而又杂乱的盛宴和文化，没有给后人留下任何东西，连一点儿余烬火花也没有。我们所有人，甚至包括那些还有家室，远在欧洲的人，都想脱‘下我脽旺家的外衣。这是一个信仰之地。我们消失在火与沙的景色中。我们离开了这绿洲的港湾——那些水流到达的地方……井、河道、暗梁、桔槔。我不想用我的名字亵渎这些美丽的名字。抹去家族的名字!抹去国家的概念!这就是沙漠教给我的东西。
    “有些人仍然想给那里做记号——在那条干涸的河道上，在这个孤零零的土墩上。小小的虚荣心表现在这一小块位于苏丹西北部，昔兰尼加南面的土地上。芬纳龙·巴恩思想用他的名字为他发现的化石命名。他甚至想用他的名字命名一个部落，为此他花了一年的时间去谈判。然而鲍汉却胜过他，有一种沙丘是用他的名字命名的。但是我不想说出我的姓名和我来自何方。战争爆发的时候，我已在沙漠里待了十年，对我来说，溜过边境易如反掌，我不属于任何国家，任何人。
    “一九三三年或一九三四年，我已不记得是哪一年了，马多克斯、加斯巴利厄斯、伯曼、我自己、两个苏丹司机和一个厨子开始了我们的旅程。我们乘着福特厢型车，第一次使用充气轮胎，它们在沙地上跑得很好，但是令人担忧的是，它们是否经得起岩石堆的考验。
    “我们在三月二十二日离开哈尔加。我和伯曼推断威廉森于一九三八年所写的三条干河谷就是泽祖拉。
    基尔夫·克尔比尔西南部有三座独立的花岗岩山丘坐落在平原上——阿喀纳山、乌怀拿德山和基苏山。这三座山相互间隔十五里——许多沟壑里积满了水。阿喀纳山的井水是苦的，只有在迫不得已的情况下人们才勉强喝的。威廉森说三条干河道形成了泽祖拉，但是他从未指明过它们的位置，因此这一直被视为是传说。然而，在这些火山口形状的小山上，只要有一个有雨的绿洲，就能解开冈比西斯和他的军队如何穿过沙漠之谜，也能解开圣战中的塞努西教徒袭击之谜，因为，这已足以解释这些巨人般的黑色袭击者是如何通过一片被认为没有水也没有牧草的沙漠。这是一个开发了几个世纪的世界，有一千条大路和小路。
    “我们在阿布贝拉斯找到一些有古希腊双耳细颈椭圆土罐风格的罐子。希罗多德曾提到这种罐子。
    “伯曼和我在艾乔夫的要塞里，在一个曾是伟大的塞努西酋长书室的石洞里，与一个像蛇一样的神秘老人谈话。一个老德布人，也是一个专业的向导，正说着口音浓重的阿拉伯语。后来伯曼引用希罗多德的话说‘像蝙蝠的尖叫’。我们一整天昼夜不停地和他谈话，而他没露半点口风。塞努西教徒的教义，也是他们最初的教义，是不要把沙漠的秘密泄漏给陌生人。
   &

V
Katharine


THE FIRST TIME she dreamed of him she woke up beside her husband screaming.

In their bedroom she stared down onto the sheet, mouth open. Her husband put his hand on her back.

“Nightmare. Don’t worry.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I get you some water?”

“Yes.”

She wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t lie back into that zone they had been in.

The dream had taken place in this room—his hand on her neck (she touched it now), his anger towards her that she had
sensed the first few times she had met him. No, not anger, a lack of interest, irritation at a married woman being among them.
They had been bent over like animals, and he had yoked her neck back so she had been unable to breathe within her arousal.

Her husband brought her the glass on a saucer but she could not lift her arms, they were shaking, loose. He put the glass


awkwardly against her mouth so she could gulp the chlorinated water, some coming down her chin, falling to her stomach.
When she lay back she hardly had time to think of what she had witnessed, she fell into a quick deep sleep.

That had been the first recognition. She remembered it sometime during the next day, but she was busy then and she refused
to nestle with its significance for long, dismissed it; it was an accidental collision on a crowded night, nothing more.

A year later the other, more dangerous, peaceful dreams came. And even within the first one of these she recalled the hands
at her neck and waited for the mood of calmness between them to swerve to violence.

Who lays the crumbs of food that tempt you? Towards a person you never considered. A dream. Then later another series of
dreams.

He said later it was propinquity. Propinquity in the desert. It does that here, he said. He loved the word—the propinquity of
water, the propinquity of two or three bodies in a car driving the Sand Sea for six hours. Her sweating knee beside the gearbox
of the truck, the knee swerving, rising with the bumps. In the desert you have time to look everywhere, to theorize on the
choreography of all things around you.

When he talked like that she hated him, her eyes remaining polite, her mind wanting to slap him. She always had the desire
to slap him, and she realized even that was sexual. For him all relationships fell into patterns. You fell into propinquity or
distance. Just as, for him, the histories in Herodotus clarified all societies. He assumed he was experienced in the ways of the
world he had essentially left years earlier, struggling ever since to explore a half-invented world of the desert.

At Cairo aerodrome they loaded the equipment into the vehicles, her husband staying on to check the petrol lines of the
Moth before the three men left the next morning. Madox went off to one of the embassies to send a wire. And he was going
into town to get drunk, the usual final evening in

Cairo, first at Madame Badin’s Opera Casino, and later to disappear into the streets behind the Pasha Hotel. He would pack
before the evening began, which would allow him to just climb into the truck the next morning, hung over.

So he drove her into town, the air humid, the traffic bad and slow because of the hour.

“It’s so hot. I need a beer. Do you want one?”

“No, I have to arrange for a lot of things in the next couple of hours. You’ll have to excuse me.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I don’t want to interfere.”

“I’ll have one with you when I come back.”

“In three weeks, right?”

“About that.”

“I wish I were going too.”

He said nothing in answer to that. They crossed the Bulaq Bridge and the traffic got worse. Too many carts, too many
pedestrians who owned the streets. He cut south along the Nile towards the Semiramis Hotel, where she was staying, just
beyond the barracks.

“You’re going to find Zerzura this time, aren’t you.”

“I’m going to find it this time.”

He was like his old self. He hardly looked at her on the drive, even when they were stalled for more than five minutes in one
spot.

At the hotel he was excessively polite. When he behaved this way she liked him even less; they all had to pretend this pose
was courtesy, graciousness. It reminded her of a dog in clothes. To hell with him. If her husband didn’t have to work with him
she would prefer not to see him again.

He pulled her pack out of the rear and was about to carry it into the lobby.

“Here, I can take that.” Her shirt was damp at the back when she got out of the passenger seat.

The doorman offered to take the pack, but he said, “No, she wants to carry it,” and she was angry again at his assumption.
The doorman left them. She turned to him and he passed her the bag so she was facing him, both hands awkwardly carrying the
heavy case in front of her.

“So. Good-bye. Good luck.”

“Yes. I’ll look after them all. They’ll be safe.”

She nodded. She was in shadow, and he, as if unaware of the harsh sunlight, stood in it.

Then he came up to her, closer, and she thought for a moment he was going to embrace her. Instead he put his right arm
forward and drew it in a gesture across her bare neck so her skin was touched by the whole length of hisdamp forearm.

“Good-bye.”

He walked back to the truck. She could feel his sweat now, like blood left by a blade which the gesture of his arm seemed to
have imitated.

She picks up a cushion and places it onto her lap as a shield against him. “If you make love to me I won’t lie about it. If I
make love to you I won’t lie about it.”

She moves the cushion against her heart, as if she would suffocate that part of herself which has broken free.

“What do you hate most?” he asks.

“A lie. And you?”

“Ownership,” he says. “When you leave me, forget me.”

Her fist swings towards him and hits hard into the bone just below his eye. She dresses and leaves.

Each day he would return home and look at the black bruise in the mirror. He became curious, not so much about the bruise,
but about the shape of his face. The long eyebrows he had never really noticed before, the beginning of grey in his sandy hair.
He had not looked at himself like this in a mirror for years. That was a long eyebrow.


Nothing can keep him from her.

When he is not in the desert with Madox or with Bermann in the Arab libraries, he meets her in Groppi Park—beside the
heavily watered plum gardens. She is happiest here. She is a woman who misses moisture, who has always loved low green
hedges and ferns. While for him this much greenery feels like a carnival.

From Groppi Park they arc out into the old city, South Cairo, markets where few Europeans go. In his rooms maps cover the
walls. And in spite of his attempts at furnishing there is still a sense of base camp to his quarters.

They lie in each other’s arms, the pulse and shadow of the fan on them. All morning he and Bermann have worked in the
archaeological museum placing Arabic texts and European histories beside each other in an attempt to recognize echo, coincidence,
name changes—back past Herodotus to the Kitab al Kanuz, where Zerzura is named after the bathing woman in a
desert caravan. And there too the slow blink of a fan’s shadow. And here too the intimate exchange and echo of childhood
history, of scar, of manner of kiss.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do! How can I be your lover? He will go mad.”

A list of wounds.

The various colours of the bruise—bright russet leading to brown. The plate she walked across the room with, flinging its
contents aside, and broke across his head, the blood rising up into the straw hair. The fork that entered the back of his shoulder,
leaving its bite marks the doctor suspected were caused by a fox.

He would step into an embrace with her, glancing first to see what moveable objects were around. He would meet her with
others in public with bruises or a bandaged head and explain about the taxi jerking to a halt so that he had hit the open side
window. Or with iodine on his forearm that covered a welt. Madox worried about his becoming suddenly accident-prone. She
sneered quietly at the weakness of his explanation. Maybe it’s his age, maybe he needs glasses, said her husband, nudging
Madox. Maybe it’s a woman he met, she said. Look, isn’t that a woman’s scratch or bite?

It was a scorpion, he said. Androctonus australis.

A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle.

Half my days 1 cannot bear not to touch you.

The rest of the time I feel it doesn’t matter

if I ever see you again. It isn’t the morality,

it is how much you can bear.

No date, no name attached.

Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their
prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful
songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumour of the two of them as they
walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.

He sweeps his arm across plates and glasses on a restaurant table so she might look up somewhere else in the city hearing
this cause of noise. When he is without her. He, who has never felt alone in the miles of longitude between desert towns. A
man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant
he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one
can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart. The plant continues to flourish for a year before it dies from some lack or
other.

He lies in his room surrounded by the pale maps. He is without Katharine. His hunger wishes to burn down all social rules,
all courtesy.

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the
minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed
book.

He has been disassembled by her.

And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?

When she is within the wall of her class and he is beside her in larger groups he tells jokes he doesn’t laugh at himself.
Uncharacteristically manic, he attacks the history of exploration. When he is unhappy he does this. Only Madox recognizes the
habit. But she will not even catch his eye. She smiles to everyone, to the objects in the room, praises a flower arrangement,
worthless impersonal things. She misinterprets his behaviour, assuming this is what he wants, and doubles the size of the wall
to protect herself.

But now he cannot bear this wall in her. You built your walls too, she tells him, so I have my wall. She says it glittering in a
beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes, with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her, with the
uncertain grin for his angry jokes. He continues his appalling statements about this and that in some expedition they are all
familiar with.

The minute she turns away from him in the lobby of Grop-pi’s bar after he greets her, he is insane. He knows the only way
he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this.


Not with a wall.

Sunlight pours into his Cairo room. His hand flabby over the Herodotus journal, all the tension in the rest of his body, so he
writes words down wrong, the pen sprawling as if without spine. He can hardly write down the word sunlight. The words in
love.

In the apartment there is light only from the river and the desert beyond it. It falls upon her neck her feet the vaccination scar
he loves on her right arm. She sits on the bed hugging nakedness. He slides his open palm along the sweat of her shoulder. This
is my shoulder, he thinks, not her husband’s, this is my shoulder. As lovers they have offered parts of their bodies to each
other, like this. In this room on the periphery of the river.

In the few hours they have, the room has darkened to this pitch of light. Just river and desert light. Only when there is the
rare shock of rain do they go towards the window and put their arms out, stretching, to bathe as much as they can of
themselves in it. Shouts towards the brief downpour fill the streets.

“We will never love each other again. We can never see each other again.”

“I know,” he says.

The night of her insistence on parting.

She sits, enclosed within herself, in the armour of her terrible conscience. He is unable to reach through it. Only his body is
close to her.

“Never again. Whatever happens.”

“Yes.”

“I think he will go mad. Do you understand?”

He says nothing, abandoning the attempt to pull her within him.

An hour later they walk into a dry night. They can hear the gramophone songs in the distance from the Music for All cinema,
its windows open for the heat. They will have to part before that closes up and people she might know emerge from there.

They are in the botanical garden, near the Cathedral of All Saints. She sees one tear and leans forward and licks it, taking it
into her mouth. As she has taken the blood from his hand when he cut himself cooking for her. Blood. Tear. He feels
everything is missing from his body, feels he contains smoke. All that is alive is the knowledge of future desire and want. What
he would say he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter
what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real
world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.

This night of her insistence. Twenty-eighth of September. The rain in the trees already dried by hot moonlight. Not one cool
drop to fall down upon him like a tear. This parting at Groppi Park. He has not asked if her husband is home in that high square
of light, across the street.

He sees the tall row of traveller’s palms above them, their outstretched wrists. The way her head and hair were above him,
when she was his lover.

Now there is no kiss. Just one embrace. He untugs himself from her and walks away, then turns. She is still there. He comes
back within a few yards of her, one finger raised to make a point.

“I just want you to know. I don’t miss you yet.” His face awful to her, trying to smile. Her head sweeps away from him and
hits the side of the gatepost. He sees it hurt her, notices the wince. But they have separated already into themselves now, the
walls up at her insistence. Her jerk, her pain, is accidental, is intentional. Her hand is near her temple.

“You will,” she says.

From this point on in our lives, she had whispered to him earlier, we will either find or lose our souls.

How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.

I was in her arms. I had pushed the sleeve of her shirt up to the shoulder so I could see her vaccination scar. I love this, I
said. This pale aureole on her arm. I see the instrument scratch and then punch the serum within her and then release itself, free
of her skin, years ago, when she was nine years old, in a school gymnasium.
5.凯瑟琳
  她第一次梦见他，惊叫着在丈夫身边醒来。
  在他们的卧室里，她两眼紧盯着床单，张大着嘴，她丈夫把手放在她的背上。    
  “是个噩梦，别怕。”    
  “是的。”
  “我去倒点水给你喝?”
  “好吧。”
  她无法动弹，她不能再躺回到他们曾经躺过的那块地方了。    ．
    这个梦就发生在这间屋里——他的手放在她的脖子上(此刻她正抚摸着自己的脖子)。在她最初几次约会的时候，她能感觉到他的怒气。不，不是怒气，是对他们当中有个有夫之妇感到无趣和恼怒。他们像野兽一样纠缠在一起，他扼住她的脖子，以致于她被自己的激情燃烧得不能呼吸。
    她的丈夫倒来一杯水，放在茶托上，但是她的手臂抬不起来，只是无力地垂着，颤抖着。他手脚笨拙地把水递到她的唇边，使她能喝下一点这氯化过的水。有一些水流到她的下巴
上，淌到她的身上。她又躺下，还没来得及想想她梦见了什么，就又沉沉睡去了。
    那是他们初次在梦中相见。她第二天似乎还能记起些什么，但是她太忙了，所以不愿花太多时间去想那个梦有什么意义。不再去想它了，它不过是在一个夜晚偶然做的一个梦，仅
此而已。    
    一年多以后，她又做了些更危险而又平静的梦。在这些梦境之初，她都能回忆起那双手放在她脖子上的感觉，等待着他们之间的情绪平静下来之后，再突然燃起激情。
    是谁用诱饵诱惑你?对于一个你从未在意过的人，一个梦，而后是一连串的梦。
他后来说这是一种接近，一种在沙漠里的接近。他说，它就是存在于此。他喜欢那个词——跟水的那种接近，与两三个人同车在沙海里奔驰六个小时的那种接近。她汗湿的膝盖靠着卡车的齿轮箱，随着汽车的颠簸而摆动起伏。在沙漠里，你有的是时间观察一切，为周围一切事物的跳动建立合理的解释。
    当他以那种姿态和她说话的时候，她恨透了他。她的眼神还是保持着礼貌，内心却想要掴他一记耳光。她经常想着要给他一记耳光。她甚至认为那样做是性感的。对他而言，所有的关系都变成了种种模式——不是接近就是保持距离。就像他对希罗多德的认识一样，他认为，希罗多德的历史著作阐明了所有的社会形态。他以为从这个本质上他多年来早已离开了这个世界，他已看透了其中的人情世故。多年来，他一直在挣扎着，努力探索沙漠中的半虚幻世界。
    在开罗机场，他们把仪器设备装上飞机。在第二早上他们三个男人离开之前，她的丈夫将忙着检查那架蛾式飞机的巡逻路线。马多克斯到一个大使馆去拍电报，而他正打算到城里去喝一杯。通常他们在开罗的最后一顿晚餐，往往是先到葆琳太太的歌剧赌场，然后消失在帕夏饭店后面的街道。他要在夜晚来临之前离开，第二天早上才能爬进那辆卡车。
    于是他开车带她去城里。空气潮湿，加上这个时间的交通状况很差，车子开得很慢。
    “天气这么热，我想喝点儿啤酒，你想要吗?”
    “不，剩下的时间里我还得安排许多事呢，你可别见怪。”
    “那好吧，”她说，“我不想干涉你。”
    “我回来后再跟你喝一杯吧。”    
    “三个星期后，对吗?”
    “差不多。”  
    “我希望我也能去。”
    他没有答话。他们驶过布莱克桥后，交通状况变得更糟。道路上挤满了运货车和行人。他取道向南沿着尼罗河，驶向塞米拉米斯饭店，她住在那里，就在营地的对岸。
    “这次你要去找泽祖拉，是吗?”
    “这次我要找到它。”
    他还是老样子，开车的时候几乎不看她一眼，甚至当他们因车子引擎熄火而在一个地方待了五分钟时，他仍然这样。
    在饭店里，他特别客气。当他这样做时，她对他的喜欢便少了几分。他们都得假装礼貌优雅，这使她想到一只穿了衣服的狗。见他的鬼。要不是因为她的丈夫得和他一起工作，她才不要再见到他。
    他从车厢把她的行李拎出来，打算帮她扛进大厅去。
    “放这儿吧，我拿得动。”当她从乘客座上下来时，她背苦的上衣已经湿了。门口服务生想帮她拎行李，但是他说：‘‘不她想自己拿。”因此她对他的自以为是感到很生气。服务生灵开了。她转向他，他递给她一个袋子。她现在面对着他了。她笨拙地拎起两件沉重的行李。
    “再见，祝你好运。”
    “好的，我会照顾他们的，他们会平安无事的。”
    她点点头。她站在阴凉处，他则站在太阳下，仿佛不觉得阳光酷热。
    他走向她，靠得更近了，她几乎以为他就要拥抱她了。但是他没有这样做，而是向她伸出右臂，擦过她的颈间。他整个汗湿的前臂掠过了她的肌肤。
    “再见。”
    他走向那辆卡车。她现在仍能感觉到他的汗。他的手臂像是在模仿劈刀的姿势，而他的汗就像刀劈之后，流出的鲜血一样。    
    
    她拎起一个垫子，把它放在大腿上，像是防御他的盾牌：“如果你和我做爱，我不会对此撒谎。如果我和你做爱，我也不会撒谎。”
    她把垫子挪到胸口，好像要让她那已经解放的部位感到窒息。
  “你最恨什么?”他问。    
  “谎言，你呢?”
  “占有，”他说，“当你离开时，就把我忘了吧。”
    她的拳头挥向他，重重地打在他的颧骨上。她穿上衣服，离开了他。
    每天他都要回家，从镜子里看那块瘀青。他变得好奇了，不是对那块瘀青，而是对自己的脸感到好奇。他以前从未注意过那长长的眉毛，沙褐色的头发开始有些发白了。他已有好多年没有像这样在镜子里端详自己了。那是两道长眉毛。
    没有什么事能阻止他到她这来。
    当他不与马多克斯一起待在沙漠里，或不与伯曼待在阿拉伯的图书馆时，他就会在格罗皮公园和她碰面。格罗皮公园就位于一座受到充分灌溉的李子园旁。她最喜欢这里，她是个喜欢潮湿空气的女人，酷爱绿色的树篱和蕨类植物。他则觉得太多的绿色植物看起来像是嘉年华会。
    他们从格罗皮公园绕进了旧城。开罗南面的市场上很少有欧洲人会光顾。他房间里的墙壁贴满了地图。尽管他想把房间布置得更好，但还是摆脱不了基地的那种感觉。
    他们相拥而卧，躺在扇叶转动的阴影下。整个早上他都和伯曼在博物馆里工作，他们对照阿拉伯文本和欧洲史，试图发现它们的共鸣、巧合及名字的变化。他们从希罗多德追溯到克塔博。阿尔卡努兹的时代。有个在沙漠篷车里洗澡的女人名叫泽祖拉，那个地方后来就以此为名。而那儿也有扇叶缓缓转动。他们无拘无束的交流，回忆童年往事，诉说着疤痕的缘由和亲吻的方式。
    “我不知道怎么办。我不知道该怎么办!我怎么能够做你的情人?他会发疯的。”
    一份记载伤势的资料。
    各种瘀青的颜色，由明显的红褐色转为黄棕色。她端着盘子走过房间，把盘子盛的东西倒在一边，将盘子连同叉子向他的头丢去，血便从头发里流出来。叉子插进了他的肩膀。叉子留下的伤痕，连医生都以为是被狐狸咬的。
    他要向前和她拥抱时，还会先看看周围的动静。他要带着瘀青和扎着绷带的头，和她在大庭广众下见面，并对别人解释头的伤是搭出租车时，遇到紧急刹车，撞上窗户造成的。或者在前臂上擦上碘酒掩饰伤痕。马多克斯为他突然间常遇到意外而感到担心。他笨拙的解释使她暗自窃笑。也许他上了年纪了，也许他需要戴副眼镜，她丈夫一边说，一边用手肘轻推了马多克斯一下。也许他遇见了女人，她说。看，那不是被一个女人抓伤或咬伤的吗?
  “是蝎子。”他说。    
  一张明信片，长方形的卡片上字迹整齐。
  在我一半的日子里，我不能忍受没有你。
  在另一半日子里，我又觉得无所谓。    
    只要我能再次见到你。
    这与道德无关，
    而在于你能够忍受多少。
    没有日期，没有署名。
    当她可以整夜和他待在一起时，他们会在拂晓前被城里三座清真寺尖塔里的钟声唤醒。他和她走过设在开罗南部和她家之间的市场。他们走在清晨清冷的空气里，美妙动听的宗教歌声像弓箭一般直人云霄。一座尖塔应和着另一座的歌声，仿佛是在传播着关于他们的流言蜚语。木炭和大麻的气味浓浓地飘散在空气中。他们是圣城内的罪人。
    他用手臂扫落餐馆桌上的盘子和玻璃杯，希望待在城里的她，会抬头看看，寻找噪音的来源。当她不在身边的时候，他是个一向独自来去沙漠和小镇之间，却从不感到．孤独的人。一个在沙漠里的男人会用双手捧着空虚，心里明白这对他来说比水还珍贵。他知道厄塔吉附近有一种植物，如果有人把它的心挖去，原来长着心的地方，便会流出具有草药疗效的汁液。每天早上他就可以从这棵植物上喝到相当分量的汁液。这种植物即使缺少了某个部分，也还能枝繁叶茂地活上一年。
    他躺在他的房间里，被四面墙上苍白无力的地图包围着。凯瑟琳不在他身边。他强烈地想要烧毁一切社会规则和所有的繁文缛节。
    他不再在乎她与别人在一起生活的事实。他只是想着她的纤细优美，她的风情妩媚。他向往那个时刻，他们之间心有灵犀，在心灵深处有一小块共同的天地，他们是如此不同，却又像合上的两张书页般亲密交融。
    他已经被她拆散了。
    而如果她带给他的是破碎的心灵，那么他又带给她什么呢?
    当她待在她生活圈的藩篱中，他待在她身边的人群中说着笑话时，自己却不笑。他抨击勘探史是不可理喻的疯狂行径——当他心情不好时就会这样。只有马多克斯了解他这种习惯。但是她根本不理睬他的目光。她对每一个人微笑，对房间的每一件东西微笑，她赞美插花，或一些无关紧要的东西。她误解了他的意思，以为这就是他想要的，因而她在心里建立起双重的藩篱。
    但是现在她不能忍受她心里的这道藩篱。你也建立了你的藩篱，她对他说，所以我才建起了我的。她说这些事的时候，身上那耀人眼目的美丽令他不能自持。她穿着漂亮的衣服，她那张苍白的脸上堆着笑，回应每一个对她微笑的人，对他的笑话不置可否地露齿一笑。他继续对他们讲述一些危险的经历，而那些勘探故事是他们早巳熟悉的。
    他和她在格罗皮酒吧的大厅打过招呼以后，她就不再理睬他。他发疯了。他知道如果他不能继续控制她，他就会被她所控制。也许他会失去她，这是他能够接受的惟一方式。如果他们能彼此互相照顾，摆脱困境，那该有多好。而不是在彼此之间砌起一道藩篱，把彼此隔开。    
    阳光照进他在开罗的房间，他的手无力地摊在希罗多德的笔记上，所有的精力都积聚在身体的其它部位，因而不断地写错字。他只是拿着钢笔潦草地在纸上乱画。他几乎写不出那些词语——“阳光”和“恋爱”。
    在这间套房里，仅有的光线是来自河水和河对岸沙漠的反光。光照在她的颈上、脚上和他喜欢的右臂的牛痘疤上。她赤裸裸地坐在床上，他张开的手滑过她满是汗水的肩头。这是我的肩膀，他想着，不是她丈夫的，这是我的。他们待在这河边的房间里，情人们往往像这样把身体的一部分许诺给对方。
    几小时之后，房里已经暗了下来，只有河水和沙漠的光亮。天上下起了一阵罕见的大雨，他们走到窗前，向窗外伸出手臂，让雨水尽情地冲刷着。他们对着街上短暂的暴雨大喊。
    “我们不要再相爱了，我们不要再相见了。”
    “我知道。”他说。
    这一夜她坚持要分手。
    她坐下来，用她可怕的良心盔甲把自己包裹起来。他无法穿透它，只有身体能贴近她。
    “无论发生什么事，再也不要见面了。”
    “好。”
    “我想他会发疯的，你明白吗?”
    他什么也没说，放弃了拥抱她的念头。
    一个小时之后，他们走进雨后的夜，他们能听见不远处的大众音乐电影院传出留声机播放的歌声。因为天气热，电影院的窗户敞开着。他们必须在电影散场前离开，以免碰上她认识的人从电影院里面出来。
    他们待在圣徒大教堂附近的植物园里，那里长满了各种植物。她看见叶子上有一滴泪水，于是倾身向前，用舌头将它舔进嘴里。就像他做饭时切伤了手，她为他舔去伤口的血。鲜血、泪水……他觉得他身上所有的一切都流失了，只剩下一缕青烟。脑子里只在想未来的欲望和需要。他想说的不能说给这个女人听，她的坦荡像一种伤害，她的青春还没有衰败。他无法改变她，但这也是他最爱她的一点，她珍爱的浪漫情意仍得以安然地留存于这个真实世界中。除了这些特质之外，他知道这世界已没有秩序可言。
    她坚持要分手的那一夜是九月二十八日。树上的雨点已被月光蒸发了，没有任何冰冷的雨滴像泪水一样落在他脸上。那天他们在格罗皮公园分手。对面有亮光的窗子就是她的家，他已不再问她的丈夫是否在家。
    他看见他们上方一排排旅人蕉的掌叶，枝叶向外延伸交叠在一起。当她是他的情人时，她的头和秀发就是这样靠在他身上。
    他们没有吻，只有一次拥抱。他轻易地从她的怀抱里摆脱出来，走开，然后转身。她仍然站在那儿。他往回走了几步，离她只有几码远，然后用手指指着她说：
    “我只是想让你知道，我再也不会想你。”    ．
    他努力想强颜欢笑，她却觉得他的神色恐怖。她猛然转过头去，撞到了门柱上。他看见她碰伤了，注意到她脸部肌肉因疼痛而抽搐。但是现在他们已经分手了——在她的坚持下。她的抽搐，她的痛苦，是偶然的，是刻意的。她将手放在太阳穴边。
    “你会的。”她说。
   她早已低声告诉过他了。从我们生命中的这一点开始，如果我们找不到我们的灵魂，就会失去它。
    
    这是怎么发生的?坠入情网却又被拆散。
    “我躺在她的臂弯里。我已经把她的衣袖卷到肩膀上，这样我就能看见她的牛痘疤痕了。我喜欢这个，我说。她手臂上这个白色的圆圈。我看见种牛痘的针在她的手臂上轻扎了一下，然后打进免疫血清，再离开她的手臂，让她的皮肤得到解脱。这是多年以前的事了，当她还是个九岁的小姑娘，在学校的体育馆里种牛痘。”

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VI

A Buried Plane

HE GLARES OUT, each eye a path, down the long bed at the end of which is Hana. After she has bathed him she breaks the tip
off an ampoule and turns to him with the morphine. An effigy. A bed. He rides the boat of morphine. It races in him, imploding
time and geography the way maps compress the world onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper.

The long Cairo evenings. The sea of night sky, hawks in rows until they are released at dusk, arcing towards the last colour
of the desert. A unison of performance like a handful of thrown seed.

In that city in 1936 you could buy anything—from a dog or a bird that came at one pitch of a whistle, to those terrible
leashes that slipped over the smallest finger of a woman so she was tethered to you in a crowded market.

In the northeast section of Cairo was the great courtyard of religious students, and beyond it the Khan el Khalili bazaar.
Above the narrow streets we looked down upon cats on the corrugated tin roofs who also looked down the next ten feet to the
street and stalls. Above all this was our room. Windows open to minarets, feluccas, cats, tremendous noise. She spoke to me of
her childhood gardens. When she couldn’t sleep she drew her mother’s garden for me, word by word, bed by bed, the
December ice over the fish pond, the creak of rose trellises. She would take -my wrist at the confluence of veins and guide it
onto the hollow indentation at her neck.


March 1937, Uweinat. Madox is irritable because of the thinness in the air. Fifteen hundred feet above sea level and he is
uncomfortable with even this minimal height. He is a desert man after all, having left his family’s village of Marston Magna,
Somerset, altered all customs and habits so he can have the proximity to sea level as well as regular dryness.

“Madox, what is the name of that hollow at the base of a woman’s neck? At the front. Here. What is it, does it have an
official name? That hollow about the size of an impress of your thumb?”

Madox watches me for a moment through the noon glare.

“Pull yourself together,” he mutters.

Let me tell you a story,” Caravaggio says to Hana. “There was a Hungarian named Almasy, who worked for the Germans
during the war. He flew a bit with the Afrika Korps, but he was more valuable than that. In the 19305 he had been one of the
great desert explorers. He knew every water hole and had helped map the Sand Sea. He knew all about the desert. He knew all
about dialects. Does this sound familiar? Between the two wars he was always on expeditions out of Cairo. One was to search
for Zerzura—the lost oasis. Then when war broke out he joined the Germans. In 1941 he became a guide for spies, taking them
across the desert into Cairo. What I want to tell you is, I think the English patient is not English.”

“Of course he is, what about all those flower beds in Gloucestershire?”

“Precisely. It’s all a perfect background. Two nights ago, when we were trying to name the dog. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“What were his suggestions?”

“He was strange that night.”

“He was very strange, because I gave him an extra dose of morphine. Do you remember the names? He put out about eight
names. Five of them were obvious jokes. Then three names. Cicero. Zerzura. Delilah.”

“So?”

“ ‘Cicero’ was a code name for a spy. The British unearthed him. A double then triple agent. He got away. ‘Zerzura’ is more
complicated.”

“I know about Zerzura. He’s talked about it. He also talks about gardens.”

“But it is mostly the desert now. The English garden is wearing thin. He’s dying. I think you have the spy-helper Almasy
upstairs.”

They sit on the old cane hampers of the linen room looking at each other. Caravaggio shrugs. “It’s possible.”

“I think he is an Englishman,” she says, sucking in her cheeks as she always does when she is thinking or considering
something about herself.

“I know you love the man, but he’s not an Englishman. In the early part of the war I was working in Cairo—the Tripoli
Axis. Rommel’s Rebecca spy—”

“What do you mean, ‘Rebecca spy’?”

“In 1942 the Germans sent a spy called Eppler into Cairo before the battle of El Alamein. He used a copy of Daphne du
Maurier’s novel Rebecca as a code book to send messages back to Rommel on troop movements. Listen, the book became bedside
reading with British Intelligence. Even I read it.”

“You read a book?”

“Thank you. The man who guided Eppler through the desert into Cairo on Rommel’s personal orders—from Tripoli all the
way to Cairo—was Count Ladislaus de Almasy. This was a stretch of desert that, it was assumed, no one could cross.

“Between the wars Almasy had English friends. Great explorers. But when war broke out he went with the Germans.
Rommel asked him to take Eppler across the desert into Cairo because it would have been too obvious by plane or parachute.
He crossed the desert with the guy and delivered him to the Nile delta.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“I was based in Cairo. We were tracking them. From Gialo he led a company of eight men into the desert. They had to keep
digging the trucks out of the sand hills. He aimed them towards Uweinat and its granite plateau so they could get water, take
shelter in the caves. It was a halfway point. In the 19305 he had discovered caves with rock paintings there. But the plateau
was crawling with Allies and he couldn’t use the wells there. He struck out into the sand desert again. They raided British
petrol dumps to fill up their tanks. In the Kharga Oasis they switched into British uniforms and hung British army number
plates on their vehicles. When they were spotted from the air they hid in the wadis for as long as three days, completely still.
Baking to death in the sand.

“It took them three weeks to reach Cairo. Almdsy shook hands with Eppler and left him. This is where we lost him. He
turned and went back into the desert alone. We think he crossed it again, back towards Tripoli. But that was the last time he
was ever seen. The British picked up Eppler eventually and used the Rebecca code to feed false information to Rommel about
El Alamein.”

“I still don’t believe it, David.”

“The man who helped catch Eppler in Cairo was named Sansom.”

“Delilah.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe he’s Sansom.”

“I thought that at first. He was very like Almdsy. A desert lover as well. He had spent his childhood in the Levant and knew
the Bedouin. But the thing about Almasy was, he could fly. We are talking about someone who crashed in a plane. Here is this
man, burned beyond recognition, who somehow ends up in the arms of the English at Pisa. Also, he can get away with
sounding English. Almdsy went to school in England. In Cairo he was referred to as the English spy.”

She sat on the hamper watching Caravaggio. She said, “I think we should leave him be. It doesn’t matter what side he was
on, does it?”


Caravaggio said, “I’d like to talk with him some more. With more morphine in him. Talking it out. Both of us. Do you
understand? To see where it will all go. Delilah. Zerzura. You will have to give him the altered shot.”

“No, David. You’re too obsessed. It doesn’t matter who he is. The war’s over.”

“I will then. I’ll cook up a Brompton cocktail. Morphine and alcohol. They invented it at Brompton Hospital in London for
their cancer patients. Don’t worry, it won’t kill him. It absorbs fast into the body. I can put it together with what we’ve got.
Give him a drink of it. Then put him back on straight morphine.”

She watched him sitting on the hamper, clear-eyed, smiling. During the last stages of the war Caravaggio had become one of
the numerous morphia thieves. He had sniffed out her medical supplies within hours of his arrival. The small tubes of
morphine were now a source for him. Like toothpaste tubes for dolls, she had thought when she first saw them, finding them
utterly quaint. Caravaggio carried two or three in his pocket all day long, slipping the fluid into his flesh. She had stumbled on
him once vomiting from its excess, crouched and shaking in one of the dark corners of the villa, looking up and hardly
recognizing her. She had tried speaking with him and he had stared back. He had found the metal supply box, torn it open with
God knows what strength. Once when the sapper cut open the palm of his hand on an iron gate, Caravaggio broke the glass tip
off with his teeth, sucked and spat the morphine onto the brown hand before Kip even knew what it was. Kip pushing him
away, glaring in anger.

“Leave him alone. He’s my patient.”

“I won’t damage him. The morphine and alcohol will take away the pain.”

(3 CC’s BROMPTON COCKTAIL. 3:00 P.M.)

Caravaggio slips the book out of the man’s hands.

“When you crashed in the desert—where were you flying from?”

“I was leaving the Gilf Kebir. I had gone there to collect someone. In late August. Nineteen forty-two.”

“During the war? Everyone must have left by then.”

“Yes. There were just armies.”

“The Gilf Kebir.”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Give me the Kipling book... here.”

On the frontispiece of Kirn was a map with a dotted line for the path the boy and the Holy One took. It showed just a portion
of India—a darkly cross-hatched Afghanistan, and Kashmir in the lap of the mountains.

He traces his black hand along the Numi River till it enters the sea at 23°3o’ latitude. He continues sliding his finger seven
inches west, off the page, onto his chest; he touches his rib.

“Here. The Gilf Kebir, just north of the Tropic of Cancer. On the Egyptian-Libyan border.”

What happened in 1942?

I had made the journey to Cairo and was returning from there. I was slipping between the enemy, remembering old maps,
hitting the pre-war caches of petrol and water, driving towards Uweinat. It was easier now that I was alone. Miles from the Gilf
Kebir, the truck exploded and I capsized, rolling automatically into the sand, not wanting a spark to touch me. In the desert one
is always frightened of fire.

The truck exploded, probably sabotaged. There were spies among the Bedouin, whose caravans continued to drift like cities,
carrying spice, rooms, government advisors wherever they went. At any given moment among the Bedouin in those days of the
war, there were Englishmen as well as Germans.

Leaving the truck, I started walking towards Uweinat, where I knew there was a buried plane.

Wait. What do you mean, a buried plane?

Madox had an old plane in the early days, which he had shaved down to the essentials—the only “extra” was the closed
bubble of cockpit, crucial for desert flights. During our times in the desert he had taught me to fly, the two of us walking
around the guy-roped creature theorizing on how it hung or veered in the wind.

When Clifton’s plane—Rupert—flew into our midst, the aging plane of Madox’s was left where it was, covered with a
tarpaulin, pegged down in one of the northeast alcoves of Uweinat. Sand collected over it gradually for the next few years.
None of us thought we would see it again. It was another victim of the desert. Within a few months we would pass the
northeast gully and see no contour of it. By now Clifton’s plane, ten years younger, had flown into our story.

So you were walking towards it?

Yes. Four nights of walking. I had left the man in Cairo and turned back into the desert. Everywhere there was war.
Suddenly there were “teams.” The Bermanns, the Bagnolds, the Slatin Pashas—who had at various times saved each other’s
lives—had now split up into camps.

I walked towards Uweinat. I got there about noon and climbed up into the caves of the plateau. Above the well named Ain
Dua.

“Caravaggio thinks he knows who you are,” Hana said.

The man in the bed said nothing.

“He says you are not English. He worked with intelligence out of Cairo and Italy for a while. Till he was captured. My
family knew Caravaggio before the war. He was a thief. He believed in ‘the movement of things.’ Some thieves are collectors,
like some of the explorers you scorn, like some men with women or some women with men. But Caravaggio was not like that.
He was too curious and generous to be a successful thief. Half the things he stole never came home. He thinks you are not
English.”


She watched his stillness as she spoke; it appeared that he was not listening carefully to what she was saying. Just his
distant thinking. The way Duke Ellington looked and thought when he played “Solitude.”

She stopped talking.

He reached the shallow well named Ain Dua. He removed all of his clothes and soaked them in the well, put his head and
then his thin body into the blue water. His limbs exhausted from the four nights of walking. He left his clothes spread on the
rocks and climbed up higher into the boulders, climbed out of the desert, which was now, in 1942, a vast battlefield, and went
naked into the darkness of the cave.

He was among the familiar paintings he had found years earlier. Giraffes. Cattle. The man with his arms raised, in a plumed
headdress. Several figures in the unmistakable posture of swimmers. Bermann had been right about the presence of an ancient
lake. He walked farther into the coldness, into the Cave of Swimmers, where he had left her. She was still there.

She had dragged herself into a corner, had wrapped herself tight in the parachute material. He had promised to return for her.

He himself would have been happier to die in a cave, with its privacy, the swimmers caught in the rock around them.
Hermann had told him that in Asian gardens you could look at rock and imagine water, you could gaze at a still pool and
believe it had the hardness of rock. But she was a woman who had grown up within gardens, among moistness, with words like
trellis and hedgehog. Her passion for the desert was temporary. She’d come to love its sternness because of him, wanting to
understand his comfort in its solitude. She was always happier in rain, in bathrooms steaming with liquid air, in sleepy
wetness, climbing back in from his window that rainy night in Cairo and putting on her clothes while still wet, in order to hold
it all. Just as she loved family traditions and courteous ceremony and old memorized poems. She would have hated to die
without a name. For her there was a line back to her ancestors that was tactile, whereas he had erased the path he had emerged
from. He was amazed she had loved him in spite of such qualities of anonymity in himself.

She was on her back, positioned the way the mediaeval dead lie.

I approached her naked as I would have done in our South Cairo room, wanting to undress her, still wanting to love her.

What is terrible in what I did? Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we
are the motive for it. You can make love to a woman with a broken arm, or a woman with fever. She once sucked blood from a
cut on my hand as I had tasted and swallowed her menstrual blood. There are some European words you can never translate
properly into another language. Felhomaly. The dusk of graves. With the connotation of intimacy there between the dead and
the living.

I lifted her into my arms from the shelf of sleep. Clothing like cobweb. I disturbed all that.

I carried her out into the sun. I dressed. My clothes dry and brittle from the heat in the stones.

My linked hands made a saddle for her to rest on. As soon as I reached the sand I jostled her around so her body was facing
back, over my shoulder. I was conscious of the airiness of her weight. I was used to her like this in my arms, she had spun
around me in my room like a human reflection of the fan —her arms out, fingers like starfish.

We moved like this towards the northeast gully, where the plane was buried. I did not need a map. With me was the tank of
petrol I had carried all the way from the capsized truck. Because three years earlier we had been impotent without it.

“What happened three years earlier?”

“She had been injured. In 1939. Her husband had crashed his plane. It had been planned as a suicide-murder by her husband
that would involve all three of us. We were not even lovers at the time. I suppose information of the affair trickled down to him
somehow.”

“So she was too wounded to take with you.”

“Yes. The only chance to save her was for me to try and reach help alone.”

In the cave, after all those months of separation and anger, they had come together and spoken once more as lovers, rolling
away the boulder they had placed between themselves for some social law neither had believed in.

In the botanical garden she had banged her head against the gatepost in determination and fury. Too proud to be a lover, a
secret. There would be no compartments in her world. He had turned back to her, his finger raised, I don’t miss you yet.

You will.

During their months of separation he had grown bitter and self-sufficient. He avoided her company. He could not stand her
calmness when she saw him. He phoned her house and spoke to her husband and heard her laughter in the background. There
was a public charm in her that tempted everyone. This was something he had loved in her. Now he began to trust nothing.

He suspected she had replaced him with another lover. He interpreted her every gesture to others as a code of promise. She
gripped the front of Roundell’s jacket once in a lobby and shook it, laughing at him as he muttered something, and he followed
the innocent government aide for two days to see if there was more between them. He did not trust her last endearments to him
anymore. She was with him or against him. She was against him. He couldn’t stand even her tentative smiles at him. If she
passed him a drink he would not drink it. If at a dinner she pointed to a bowl with a Nile lily floating in it he would not look at
it. Just another fucking flower. She had a new group of intimates that excluded him and her husband. No one goes back to the
husband. He knew that much about love and human nature.

He bought pale brown cigarette papers and glued them into sections of The Histories that recorded wars that were of no
interest to him. He wrote down all her arguments against him. Glued into the book—giving himself only the voice of the
watcher, the listener, the “he.”

During the last days before the war he had gone for a last time to the Gilf Kebir to clear out the base camp. Her husband was
supposed to pick him up. The husband they had both loved until they began to love each other.

Clifton flew up on Uweinat to collect him on the appointed day, buzzing the lost oasis so low the acacia shrubs dismantled
their leaves in the wake of the plane, the Moth slipping into the depressions and cuts—while he stood on the high ridge


signalling with blue tarpaulin. Then the plane pivoted down and came straight towards him, then crashed into the earth fifty
yards away. A blue line of smoke uncoiling from the undercarriage. There was no fire.

A husband gone mad. Killing all of them. Killing himself and his wife—and him by the fact there was now no way out of the
desert.

Only she was not dead. He pulled the body free, carrying it out of the plane’s crumpled grip, this grip of her husband.

How did you hate me? she whispers in the Cave of Swimmers, talking through her pain of injuries. A broken wrist. Shattered
ribs. You were terrible to me. That’s when my husband suspected you. I still hate that about you—disappearing into deserts or
bars.

You left me in Groppi Park.

Because you didn’t want me as anything else.

Because you said your husband was going mad. Well, he went mad.

Not for a long time. I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me, will you. Stop defending yourself. Kiss
me and call me by my name.

Their bodies had met in perfumes, in sweat, frantic to get under that thin film with a tongue or a tooth, as if they each could
grip character there and during love pull it right off the body of the other.

Now there is no talcum on her arm, no rose water on her thigh.

You think you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something
you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you. How many women did you have? I left you because I knew I could
never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, so wordless sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of
yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character. In the Cave of Swimmers we talked. We were only two latitudes
away from the safety of Kufra.

He pauses and holds out his hand. Caravaggio places a morphine tablet into the black palm, and it disappears into the man’s
dark mouth.

I crossed the dry bed of the lake towards Kufra Oasis, carrying nothing but robes against the heat and night cold, my
Herodotus left behind with her. And three years later, in 1942, I walked with her towards the buried plane, carrying her body as
if it was the armour of a knight.

In the desert the tools of survival are underground—troglodyte caves, water sleeping within a buried plant, weapons, a plane.
At longitude 25, latitude 23, I dug down towards the tarpaulin, and Madox’s old plane gradually emerged. It was night and
even in the cold air I was sweating. I carried the naphtha lantern over to her and sat for a while, beside the silhouette of her
nod. Two lovers and desert—starlight or moonlight, I don’t remember. Everywhere else out there was a war.

The plane came out of the sand. There had been no food and I was weak. The tarp so heavy I couldn’t dig it out but had
simply to cut it away.

In the morning, after two hours’ sleep, I carried her into the cockpit. I started the motor and it rolled into life. We moved and
then slipped, years too late, into the sky.

The voice stops. The burned man looks straight ahead in his morphine focus.

The plane is now in his eye. The slow voice carries it with effort above the earth, the engine missing turns as if losing a
stitch, her shroud unfurling in the noisy air of the cockpit, noise terrible after his days of walking in silence. He looks down
and sees oil pouring onto his knees. A branch breaks free of her shirt. Acacia and bone. How high is he above the land? How
low is he in the sky?

The undercarriage brushes the top of a palm and he pivots up, and the oil slides over the seat, her body slipping down into it.
There is a spark from a short, and the twigs at her knee catch fire. He pulls her back into the seat beside him. He thrusts his
hands up against the cockpit glass and it will not shift. Begins punching the glass, cracking it, finally breaking it, and the oil
and the fire slop and spin everywhere. How low is he in the sky? She collapses—acacia twigs, leaves, the branches that were
shaped into arms uncoiling around him. Limbs begin disappearing in the suck of air. The odour of morphine on his tongue.
Caravaggio reflected in the black lake of his eye. He goes up and down now like a well bucket. There is blood somehow all
over his face. He is flying a rotted plane, the canvas sheetings on the wings ripping open in the speed. They are carrion. How
far back had the palm tree been? How long ago? He lifts his legs out of the oil, but they are so heavy. There is no way he can
lift them again. He is old. Suddenly. Tired of living without her. He cannot lie back in her arms and trust her to stand guard all
day all night while he sleeps. He has no one. He is exhausted not from the desert but from solitude. Madox gone. The woman
translated into leaves and twigs, the broken glass to the sky like a jaw above him.

He slips into the harness of the oil-wet parachute and pivots upside down, breaking free of glass, wind flinging his body
back. Then his legs are free of everything, and he is in the air, bright, not knowing why he is bright until he realizes he is on
fire.

Hana can hear the voices in the English patient’s room and stands in the hall trying to catch what they are saying.

How is it?

Wonderful!

Now it’s my turn.

Ahh! Splendid, splendid.

This is the greatest of inventions.


A remarkable find, young man.

When she enters she sees Kip and the English patient passing a can of condensed milk back and forth. The Englishman sucks
at the can, then moves the tin away from his face to chew the thick fluid. He beams at Kip, who seems irritated that he does not
have possession of it. The sapper glances at Hana and hovers by the bedside, snapping his fingers a couple of times, managing
finally to pull the tin away from the dark face.

“We have discovered a shared pleasure. The boy and I. For me on my journeys in Egypt, for him in India.”

“Have you ever had condensed-milk sandwiches?” xthe sapper asks.

Hana glances back and forth between the two of them.

Kip peers into the can. “I’ll get another one,” he says, and leaves the room.

Hana looks at the man in the bed.

“Kip and I are both international bastards—born in one place and choosing to live elsewhere. Fighting to get back to or get
away from our homelands all our lives. Though

Kip doesn’t recognize that yet. That’s why we get on so well together.”

In the kitchen Kip stabs two holes into the new can of condensed milk with his bayonet, which, he realizes, is now used
more and more for only this purpose, and runs back upstairs to the bedroom.

“You must have been raised elsewhere,” the sapper says. “The English don’t suck it out that way.”

“For some years I lived in the desert. I learned everything I knew there. Everything that ever happened to me that was
important happened in the desert.”

He smiles at Hana.

“One feeds me morphine. One feeds me condensed milk. We may have discovered a balanced diet!” He turns back to Kip.

“How long have you been a sapper?”

“Five years. Mostly in London. Then Italy. With the unexploded-bomb units.” “Who was your teacher?”

“An Englishman in Woolwich. He was considered eccentric.”

“The best kind of teacher. That must have been Lord Suffolk. Did you meet Miss Morden?”

“Yes.”

At no point does either of them attempt to make Hana comfortable in their conversation. But she wants to know about his
teacher, and how he would describe him.

“What was he like, Kip?”

“He worked in Scientific Research. He was head of an experimental unit. Miss Morden, his secretary, was always with him,
and his chauffeur, Mr. Fred Harts. Miss Morden would take notes, which he dictated as he worked on a bomb, while Mr. Harts
helped with the instruments. He was a brilliant man. They were called the Holy Trinity. They were blown up, all three of them,
in 1941. At Erith.”

She looks at the sapper leaning against the wall, one foot up so the sole of his boot is against a painted bush. No expression
of sadness, nothing to interpret.

Some men had unwound their last knot of life in her arms. In the town of Anghiari she had lifted live men to discover they
were already being consumed by worms. In Ortona she had held cigarettes to the mouth of the boy with no arms. Nothing had
stopped her. She had continued her duties while she secretly pulled her personal self back. So many nurses had turned into
emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons.

She watches Kip lean his head back against the wall and knows the neutral look on his face. She can read it.
6. 一架被埋葬的飞机
    他睁开眼睛，目光沿着长长的床铺，落到了坐在床脚的哈纳身上。她帮他擦洗之后，打开一支壶眼玻璃管，转向他，帮他打了一针吗啡。他像一个纸糊的人，无力地躺在床上。吗啡使他感到轻飘飘的。他乘上吗啡的小船，药性在他体内奔腾，带着他跨越时间和地理的限制，就像地图把世界压缩在一张平面的图纸上一样。
    “开罗的漫长下午。夜空如海，鹰群成行地飞翔，直到薄暮时分获得释放，它们才朝着沙漠边缘的太阳余晖盘旋而去。那情景就像一把种子迎风飞扬。
    “一九三六年的时候，在那座城里你什么都能买到……一条狗或一只小鸟，只要吹声口哨就来了。还有女人，她们的小拇指上捆着皮绳，你可以拴着她，穿过拥挤的市场。
    “开罗东北区是著名的神学院学生的院子，院子外面是汗阿尔卡里里市场。我们在狭窄的街道上方，向下俯视，看到猫儿待在波浪状的铁皮屋顶上，它们也正在打量下方十英尺处的街道和摊位。我们的房间居高临下。窗外可见清真寺的尖塔、小帆船和猫，不时还会传来扰人的喧嚣。她对我提起儿时的花园。她睡不着的时候，一字一句地对我描述她母亲的花园。我们的床挨着床。十二月的薄冰覆盖了鱼池。玫瑰花架会吱嗄作响。她会捉住我的手腕，把我的手放在血管汇流处，引导着它，把它放在她脖子上的凹处。
    “一九三七年三月，乌怀拿德。因为空气稀薄，马多克斯的脾气变得很暴躁。虽然只是在海拔一千五百英尺处，这样的高度也会使他感到不舒服。他毕竟是个在沙漠里生活的人，离开了位于索美塞得郡马斯顿马格纳村的老家后，改变了所有的习惯，因此海平面的高度可能会和常年的干燥—样，让他觉得较有亲切感。
    “‘马多克斯，女人颈子下面的那个凹处叫什么?在前面。这儿。那叫什么?它有正式的名称吗?那个凹处有没有你的拇指那么大?’
    马多克斯在正午的阳光下看了我一会儿。
    “‘振作点。’他小声地嘟哝着”。
    “我给你讲个故事，”卡拉瓦焦对哈纳说，“有一个叫奥尔马希的匈牙利人，在战争期间为德国人工作。他随非洲军团飞行，但是他的重要性远不止于此。在二十世纪三十年代时，他已经是伟大的沙漠勘探家之一。他知道每一处水坑，协助绘制了沙海的地图。他了解沙漠里的一切，他懂各种土语。这些事你熟悉吗?在两次大战之间的时间里，他经常在开罗附近从事考察：工作，其中之——就是寻找泽祖拉——湮没的绿洲。然后战争爆发了，他加入了德国人的行列。一九四一年，他成了间谍的向导，带领他们穿过沙漠，进入开罗。我想告诉你的就是，我认为这名病人不是个英国人。”
    “他当然是。格洛斯特郡的那些花床怎么解释?”
    “确切地说，这都是完善的背景。还记得两天前，当我们打算给那条狗取名字的时候吗?”
    “记得。”
    “他有什么建议?’’
    “他那天晚上看起来有些奇怪。”
    “他是很奇怪，因为我给他超过剂量的吗啡。你还记得那些名字吗?他大约提出了八个名字，其中五个显然是说着玩的。还有三个名字：西塞罗、泽祖拉、大利拉。”
    “那又怎样?”
    “‘塞罗’曾是个间谍的化名。英国人发现了他的真实身分。他原先是双面间谍，后来又变成三面间谍，他逃跑了。说到‘泽祖拉’，那就更复杂了。”
    “我知道‘泽祖拉’，他谈起过，他还常谈到花园。”
    “但是现在‘泽祖拉’多半已变成沙漠了，英国的花园正在凋零。他快死了。我认为楼上的那个人正是间谍的帮凶——奥尔马希。”
    他们在用麻布隔成的房间里，坐在老藤条吊篮上，互相对视着。卡拉瓦焦耸耸肩：“有可能。”
    “我认为他是个英国人。”她说，吸着两颊。当她在思索或考虑切身相关的问题时，常会这样。  
    “我知道你喜欢这个人，但是他不是个英国人。在战争初期，我在开罗工作——的黎波里轴心，隆美尔的蝴蝶梦间谍
  ．．．．．．”
    “‘蝴蝶梦间谍’是什么意思?”
    “一九四二年，在艾尔阿拉敏会战之前，德国人派了一个叫埃普尔的间谍到开罗。他用一本杜莫里埃的小说《蝴蝶梦》作为密码本，给隆美尔发送有关军队调动的情报。听着，这本书是英国情报人员的床头读物，连我都读过。”
    “你会读书?”
    “谢谢你，你真看得起我。有个男人奉隆美尔个人之命，引导埃普尔穿越沙漠进入开罗，那个人一路引导埃普尔从的黎波里直到开罗——他就是拉斯洛·奥尔马希伯爵。这段沙漠地带，曾被人认为是不能通行的。”
    “在二次大战之间，奥尔马希有些英国朋友，都是伟大的勘探家。但是当战争爆发时，他却投向了德国人。隆美尔请他带埃普尔穿越沙漠进入开罗，是因为如果搭飞机或用降落伞，目标太明显丁。他和那家伙一起穿越沙漠，把他送到尼罗河三角洲。”
    “对这件事你知道得很多。”
    “当时我驻扎在开罗，我们跟踪了他们。他从吉亚洛带领一队八人小组进入沙漠。他们得不断地把陷进沙里的卡车从沙丘中挖出来。他引导他们向乌怀拿德行进，那是一个花岗石高地，所以他们能从那里得到水，还能在山洞里栖身。这是半路上的一个点。三十年代的时候，他就发现了这些里边有岩石壁画的山洞。但是盟军在那个高地活动，所以他不能用那儿的水井。他又制定出一个进入沙漠的计划。他们袭击英国的汽油库，在那里装满油箱。在哈尔加绿洲，他们换上英国军队的军装，车子挂上英军车牌。当他们被人从空中发现时，他们在河谷里藏了三天，毫无动静，在沙漠里被太阳烤得半死。”
    “他们花了三个星期的时间到达开罗。奥尔马希与埃普尔握手后，离开了他。我们就是在这儿失去了他的行踪。他独自

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VII

In Situ

WESTBURY, ENGLAND, 1940

KIRPAL SINGH STOOD where the horse’s saddle would have lain across its back. At first he simply stood on the back of the
horse, paused and waved to those he could not see but who he knew would be watching. Lord Suffolk watched him through
binoculars, saw the young man wave, both arms up and swaying.

Then he descended, down into the giant white chalk horse of Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carved into the hill.
Now he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khaki uniform. If the focus on the
binoculars was exact, Lord Suffolk would see the thin line of crimson lanyard on Singh’s shoulder that signalled his sapper
unit. To them it would look like he was striding down a paper map cut out in the shape of an animal. But Singh was conscious
only of his boots scuffing the rough white chalk as he moved down the slope.

Miss Morden, behind him, was also coming slowly down the hill, a satchel over her shoulder, aiding herself with a rolled
umbrella. She stopped ten feet above the horse, unfurled the umbrella and sat within its shade. Then she opened up her
notebooks.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s fine.” She rubbed the chalk off her hands onto her skirt and adjusted her glasses. She looked up into the distance
and, as Singh had done, waved to those she could not see.

Singh liked her. She was in effect the first Englishwoman he had really spoken with since he arrived in England. Most of his
time had been spent in a barracks at Woolwich. In his three months there he had met only other Indians and English officers. A
woman would reply to a question in the NAAFI canteen, but conversations with women lasted only two or three sentences.

He was the second son. The oldest son would go into the army, the next brother would be a doctor, a brother after that would
become a businessman. An old tradition in his family. But all that had changed with the war. He joined a Sikh regiment and


was shipped to England. After the first months in London he had volunteered himself into a unit of engineers that had been
set up to deal with delayed-action and unex-ploded bombs. The word from on high in 1939 was naive: “Unexploded bombs are
considered the responsibility of the Home Office, who are agreed that they should be collected by A.R.P. wardens and police
and delivered to convenient dumps, where members of the armed forces will in due course detonate them.”

It was not until 1940 that the War Office took over responsibility for bomb disposal, and then, in turn, handed it over to the
Royal Engineers. Twenty-five bomb disposal units were set up. They lacked technical equipment and had in their possession
only hammers, chisels and road-mending tools. There were no specialists.

A bomb is a combination of the following parts:

1. A container or bomb case.
2. Afuze.
3. An initiating charge, or gaine.
4. A main charge of high explosive.
5. Superstructionalfittings—fins, lifting lugs, kopfrings, etc.
Eighty percent of bombs dropped by airplanes over Britain were thin-walled, general-purpose bombs. They usually ranged
from a hundred pounds to a thousand. A 2,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Hermann” or an “Esau.” A 4,ooo-pound bomb was
called a “Satan.”

Singh, after long days of training, would fall asleep with diagrams and charts still in his hands. Half dreaming, he entered the
maze of a cylinder alongside the picric acid and the gaine and the condensers until he reached the fuze deep within the main
body. Then he was suddenly awake.

When a bomb hit a target, the resistance caused a trembler to activate and ignite the flash pellet in the fuze. The minute
explosion would leap into the gaine, causing the penthrite wax to detonate. This set off the picric acid, which in turn caused the
main filling of TNT, amatol and aluminized powder, to explode. The journey from trembler to explosion lasted a microsecond.

The most dangerous bombs were those dropped from low altitudes, which were not activated until they had landed. These
unexploded bombs buried themselves in cities and fields and remained dormant until their trembler contacts were disturbed—
by a farmer’s stick, a car wheel’s nudge, the bounce of a tennis ball against the casing—and then they would explode.

Singh was moved by lorry with the other volunteers to the research department in Woolwich. This was a time when the
casualty rate in bomb disposal units was appallingly high, considering how few unexploded bombs there were. In 1940, after
France had fallen and Britain was in a state of siege, it got worse.

By August the blitz had begun, and in one month there were suddenly 2,500 unexploded bombs to be dealt with.

Roads were closed, factories deserted. By September the number of live bombs had reached 3,700. One hundred new bomb
squads were set up, but there was still no understanding of how the bombs worked. Life expectancy in these units was ten
weeks.

“This was a Heroic Age of bomb disposal, a period of individual prowess, when urgency and a lack of knowledge and
equipment led to the taking of fantastic risks.... It was, however, a Heroic Age whose protagonists remained obscure, since
their actions were kept from the public for reasons of security. It was obviously undesirable to publish reports that might help
the enemy to estimate the ability to deal with weapons.”

In the car, driving down to Westbury, Singh had sat in front with Mr. Harts while Miss Morden rode in the back with Lord
Suffolk. The khaki-painted Humber was famous. The mudguards were painted bright signal red—as all bomb disposal travel
units were—and at night there was a blue filter over the left sidelight. Two days earlier a man walking near the famous chalk
horse on the Downs had been blown up. When engineers arrived at the site they discovered that another bomb had landed in
the middle of the historic location— in the stomach of the giant white horse of Westbury carved into the rolling chalk hills in
1778. Shortly after this event, all the chalk horses on the Downs—there were seven—had camouflage nets pegged down over
them, not to protect them so much as stop them being obvious landmarks for bombing raids over England.

From the backseat Lord Suffolk chatted about the migration of robins from the war zones of Europe, the history of bomb
disposal, Devon cream. He was introducing the customs of England to the young Sikh as if it was a recently discovered
culture. In spite of being Lord Suffolk he lived in Devon, and until war broke out his passion was the study of Lorna Doone
and how authentic the novel was historically and geographically. Most winters he spent puttering around the villages of
Brandon and Porlock, and he had convinced authorities that Exmoor was an ideal location for bomb-disposal training. There
were twelve men under his command—made up of talents from various units, sappers and engineers, and Singh was one of
them. They were based for most of the week at Richmond Park in London, being briefed on new methods or working on
unexploded bombs while fallow deer drifted around them. But on weekends they would go down to Ex-moor, where they
would continue training during the day and afterwards be driven by Lord Suffolk to the church where Lorna Doone was shot
during her wedding ceremony. “Either from this window or from that back door... shot right down the aisle—into her shoulder.
Splendid shot, actually, though of course reprehensible. The villain was chased onto the moors and had his muscles ripped
from his body.” To Singh it sounded like a familiar Indian fable.

Lord Suffolk’s closest friend in the area was a female aviator who hated society but loved Lord Suffolk. They went shooting
together. She lived in a small cottage in Countisbury on a cliff that overlooked the Bristol Channel. Each village they passed in
the Humber had its exotica described by Lord Suffolk. “This is the very best place to buy blackthorn walking sticks.” As if
Singh were thinking of stepping into the Tudor corner store in his uniform and turban to chat casually with the owners about
canes. Lord Suffolk was the best of the English, he later told Hana. If there had been no war he would never have roused
himself from Countisbury and his retreat, called Home Farm, where he mulled along with the wine, with the flies in the old
back laundry, fifty years old, married but essentially bachelor in character, walking thp cliffs each day to visit his aviator
friend. He liked to fix things—old laundry tubs and plumbing generators and cooking spits run by a waterwheel. He had been


helping Miss Swift, the aviator, collect information on the habits of badgers.

The drive to the chalk horse at Westbury was therefore busy with anecdote and information. Even in wartime he knew the
best place to stop for tea. He swept into Pamela’s Tea Room, his arm in a sling from an accident with guncotton, and
shepherded in his clan—secretary, chauffeur and sapper —as if they were his children. How Lord Suffolk had persuaded the
LJXB Committee to allow him to set up his experimental bomb disposal outfit no one was sure, but with his background in
inventions he probably had more qualifications than most. He was an autodidact, and he believed his mind could read the
motives and spirit behind any invention. He had immediately invented the pocket shirt, which allowed fuzes and gadgets to be
stored easily by a working sapper.

They drank tea and waited for scones, discussing the in situ defusing of bombs.

“I trust you, Mr. Singh, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Singh adored him. As far as he was concerned, Lord Suffolk was the first real gentleman he had met in England.

“You know I trust you to do as well as I. Miss Morden will be with you to take notes. Mr. Harts will be farther back. If you
need more equipment or more strength, blow on the police whistle and he will join you. He doesn’t advise but he understands
perfectly. If he won’t do something it means he disagrees with you, and I’d take his advice. But you have total authority on the
site. Here is my pistol. The fuzes are probably more sophisticated now, but you never know, you might be in luck.”

Lord Suffolk was alluding to an incident that had made him famous. He had discovered a method for inhibiting a delayed-
action fuze by pulling out his army revolver and firing a bullet through the fuze head, so arresting the movement of the clock
body. The method was abandoned when the Germans introduced a new fuze in which the percussion cap and not the clock was
uppermost.

Kirpal Singh had been befriended, and he would never forget it. So far, half of his time during the war had taken place in the
slipstream of this lord who had never stepped out of England and planned never to step out of Countisbury once the war ended.
Singh had arrived in England knowing no one, distanced from his family in the Punjab. He was twenty-one years old. He had
met no one but soldiers. So that when he read the notice asking for volunteers with an experimental bomb squad, even though
he heard other sappers speak of Lord Suffolk as a madman, he had already decided that in a war you have to take control, and
there was a greater chance of choice and life alongside a personality or an individual.

He was the only Indian among the applicants, and Lord Suffolk was late. Fifteen of them were led into a library and asked by
the secretary to wait. She remained at the desk, copying out names, while the soldiers joked about the interview and the test.
He knew no one. He walked over to a wall and stared at a barometer, was about to touch it but pulled back, just putting his face
close to it. Very Dry to Fair to Stormy. He muttered the words to himself with his new English pronunciation. “Wery dry. Very
dry.” He looked back at the others, peered around the room and caught the gaze of the middle-aged secretary. She watched him
sternly. An Indian boy. He smiled and walked towards the bookshelves. Again he touched nothing. At one point he put his
nose close to a volume called Raymond, or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Hodge.

He found another, similar title. Pierre, or the Ambiguities. He turned and caught the woman’s eyes on him again. He felt as
guilty as if he had put the book in his pocket. She had probably never seen a turban before. The English! They expect you to
fight for them but won’t talk to you. Singh. And the ambiguities.

They met a very hearty Lord Suffolk during lunch, who poured wine for anyone who wanted it, and laughed loudly at every
attempt at a joke by the recruits. In the afternoon they were all given a strange exam in which a piece of machinery had to be
put back together without any prior information of what it was used for. They were allowed two hours but could leave as soon
as the problem was solved. Singh finished the exam quickly and spent the rest of the time inventing other objects that could be
made from the various components. He sensed he would be admitted easily if it were not for his race. He had come from a
country where mathematics and mechanics were natural traits. Cars were never destroyed. Parts of them were carried across a
village and readapted into a sewing machine or water pump. The backseat of a Ford was reuphol-stered and became a sofa.
Most people in his village were more likely to carry a spanner or screwdriver than a pencil. A car’s irrelevant parts thus entered
a grandfather clock or irrigation pulley or the spinning mechanism of an office chair. Antidotes to mechanized disaster were
easily found. One cooled an overheating car engine not with new rubber hoses but by scooping up cow shit and patting it
around the condenser. What he saw in England was a surfeit of parts that would keep the continent of India going for two
hundred years.

He was one of three applicants selected by Lord Suffolk. This man who had not even spoken to him (and had not laughed
with him, simply because he had not joked) walked across the room and put his arm around his shoulder. The severe secretary
turned out to be Miss Morden, and she bustled in with a tray that held two large glasses of sherry, handed one to Lord Suffolk
and, saying, “I know you don’t drink,” took the other one for herself and raised her glass to him. “Congratulations, your exam
was splendid. Though I was sure you would be chosen, even before you took it.”

“Miss Morden is a splendid judge of character. She has a nose for brilliance and character.”

“Character, sir?”

“Yes. It is not really necessary, of course, but we are going to be working together. We are very much a family here. Even
before lunch Miss Morden had selected you.”

“I found it quite a strain being unable to wink at you, Mr. Singh.”

Lord Suffolk had his arm around Singh again and was walking him to the window.

“I thought, as we do not have to begin till the middle of next week, I’d have some of the unit come down to Home Farm. We
can pool our knowledge in Devon and get to know each other. You can drive down with us in the Humber.”

So he had won passage, free of the chaotic machinery of the war. He stepped into a family, after a year abroad, as if he were
the prodigal returned, offered a chair at the table, embraced with conversations.


It was almost dark when they crossed the border from Somerset into Devon on the coastal road overlooking the Bristol
Channel. Mr. Harts turned down the narrow path bordered with heather and rhododendrons, a dark blood colour in this last
light. The driveway was three miles long.

Apart from the trinity of Suffolk, Morden and Harts, there were six sappers who made up the unit. They walked the moors
around the stone cottage over the weekend. Miss Morden and Lord Suffolk and his wife were joined by the aviatrix for the
Saturday-night dinner. Miss Swift told Singh she had always wished to fly overland to India. Removed from his barracks,
Singh had no idea of his location. There was a map on a roller high up on the ceiling. Alone one morning he pulled the roller
down until it touched the floor. Countisbury and Area. Mapped by R. Fones. Drawn by desire of Mr. James Halliday.

“Drawn by desire ...” He was beginning to love the English.

He is with Hana in the night tent when he tells her about the explosion in Erith. A 250-kilogram bomb erupting as Lord
Suffolk attempted to dismantle it. It also killed Mr. Fred Harts and Miss Morden and four sappers Lord Suffolk was training.
May 1941. Singh had been with Suffolk’s unit for a year. He was working in London that day with Lieutenant Blackler,
clearing the Elephant and Castle area of a Satan bomb. They had worked together at defusing the 4,ooo-pound bomb and were
exhausted. He remembered halfway through he looked up and saw a couple of bomb disposal officers pointing in his direction
and wondered what that was about. It probably meant they had found another bomb. It was after ten at night and he was
dangerously tired. There was another one waiting for him. He turned back to work.

When they had finished with the Satan he decided to save time and walked over to one of the officers, who had at first half
turned away as if wanting to leave.

“Yes. Where is it?”

The man took his right hand, and he knew something was wrong. Lieutenant Blackler was behind him and the officer told
them what had happened, and Lieutenant Blackler put his hands on Singh’s shoulders and gripped him.

He drove to Erith. He had guessed what the officer was hesitating about asking him. He knew the man would not have come
there just to tell him of the deaths. They were in a war, after all. It meant there was a second bomb somewhere in the vicinity,
probably the same design, and this was the only chance to find out what had gone wrong.

He wanted to do this alone. Lieutenant Blackler would stay in London. They were the last two left of the unit, and it would
have been foolish to risk both. If Lord Suffolk had failed, it meant there was something new. He wanted to do this alone, in any
case. When two men worked together there had to be a base of logic. You had to share and compromise decisions.

He kept everything back from the surface of his emotions during the night drive. To keep his mind clear, they still had to be
alive. Miss Morden drinking one large and stiff whisky before she got to the sherry. In this way she would be able to drink
more slowly, appear more ladylike for the rest of the evening. “You don’t drink, Mr. Singh, but if you did, you’d do what I do.
One full whisky and then you can sip away like a good courtier.” This was followed by her lazy, gravelly laugh. She was the
only woman he was to meet in his life who carried two silver flasks with her. So she was still drinking, and Lord Suffolk was
still nibbling at his Kipling cakes.

The other bomb had fallen half a mile away. Another SC-25okg. It looked like the familiar kind. They had defused hundreds
of them, most by rote. This was the way the war progressed. Every six months or so the enemy altered something. You learned
the trick, the whim, the little descant, and taught it to the rest of the units. They were at a new stage now.

He took no one with him. He would just have to remember each step. The sergeant who drove him was a man named

Hardy, and he was to remain by the jeep. It was suggested he wait till the next morning, but he knew they would prefer him
to do it now. The 250-kilogram SC was too common. If there was an alteration they had to know quickly. He made them
telephone ahead for lights. He didn’t mind working tired, but he wanted proper lights, not just the beams of two jeeps.

When he arrived in Erith the bomb zone was already lit. In daylight, on an innocent day, it would have been a field. Hedges,
perhaps a pond. Now it was an arena. Cold, he borrowed Hardy’s sweater and put it on top of his. The lights would keep him
warm, anyway. When he walked over to the bomb they were still alive in his mind. Exam.

With the bright light, the porousness of the metal jumped into precise focus. Now he forgot everything except distrust. Lord
Suffolk had said you can have a brilliant chess player at seventeen, even thirteen, who might beat a grand master. But you can
never have a brilliant bridge player at that age. Bridge depends on character. Your character and the character of your
opponents. You must consider the character of your enemy. This is true of bomb disposal. It is two-handed bridge. You have
one enemy. You have no partner. Sometimes for my exam I make them play bridge. People think a bomb is a mechanical
object, a mechanical enemy. But you have to consider that somebody made it.

The wall of the bomb had been torn open in its fall to earth, and Singh could see the explosive material inside. He felt he was
being watched, and refused to decide whether it was by Suffolk or the inventor of this contraption. The freshness of the
artificial light had revived him. He walked around the bomb, peering at it from every angle. To remove the fuze, he would
have to open the main chamber and get past the explosive. He unbuttoned his satchel and, with a universal key, carefully
twisted off the plate at the back of the bomb case. Looking inside he saw that the fuze pocket had been knocked free of the
case. This was good luck—or bad luck; he couldn’t tell yet. The problem was that he didn’t know if the mechanism was
already at work, if it had already been triggered. He was on his knees, leaning over it, glad he was alone, back in the world of
straightforward choice. Turn left or turn right. Cut this or cut that. But he was tired, and there was still anger in him.

He didn’t know how long he had. There was more danger in waiting too long. Holding the nose of the cylinder firm with his
boots, he reached in and ripped out the fuze pocket, and lifted it away from the bomb. As soon as he did this he began to shake.
He had got it out. The bomb was essentially harmless now. He put the fuze with its tangled fringe of wires down on the grass;
they were clear and brilliant in this light.

He started to drag the main case towards the truck, fifty yards away, where the men could empty it of the raw explosive. As
he pulled it along, a third bomb exploded a quarter of a mile away and the sky lit up, making even the arc lights seem subtle
and human.


An officer gave him a mug of Horlicks, which had some kind of alcohol in it, and he returned alone to the fuze pocket. He
inhaled the fumes from the drink.

There was no longer serious danger. If he were wrong, the small explosion would take off his hand. But unless it was
clutched to his heart at the moment of impact he wouldn’t die. The problem was now simply the problem. The fuze. The new
“joke” in the bomb.

He would have to reestablish the maze of wires into its original pattern. He walked back to the officer and asked him for the
rest of the Thermos of the hot drink. Then he returned and sat down again with the fuze. It was about one-thirty in the morning.
He guessed, he wasn’t wearing a watch. For half an hour he just looked at it with a magnified circle of glass, a sort of monocle
that hung off his buttonhole. He bent over and peered at the brass for any hint of other scratches that a clamp might have made.
Nothing.

Later he would need distractions. Later, when there was a whole personal history of events and moments in his mind, he
would need something equivalent to white sound to burn or bury everything while he thought of the problems in front of him.
The radio or crystal set and its loud band music would come later, a tarpaulin to hold the rain of real life away from him.

But now he was aware of something in the far distance, like some reflection of lightning on a cloud. Harts and Morden and
Suffolk were dead, suddenly just names. His eyes focused back onto the fuze box.

He began to turn the fuze upside down in his mind, considering the logical possibilities. Then turned it horizontal again. He
unscrewed the gaine, bending over, his ear next to it so the scrape of brass was against him. No little clicks. It came apart in
silence. Tenderly he separated the clockwork sections from the fuze and set them down. He picked up the fuze-pocket tube and
peered down into it again. He saw nothing. He was about to lay it on the grass when he hesitated and brought it back up to the
light. He wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong except for the weight. And he would never have thought about the weight if he
wasn’t looking for the joke. All they did, usually, was listen or look. He tilted the tube carefully, and the weight slipped down
toward the opening. It was a second gaine—a whole separate device—to foil any attempt at defusing.

He eased the device out towards him and unscrewed the gaine. There was a white-green flash and the sound of a whip from
the device. The second detonator had gone off. He pulled it out and set it beside the other parts on the grass. He went back to
the jeep.

“There was a second gaine,” he muttered. “I was very lucky, being able to pull out those wires. Put a call in to headquarters
and find out if there are other bombs.”

He cleared the soldiers away from the jeep, set up a loose bench there and asked for the arc lights to be trained on it. He bent
down and picked up the three components and placed them each a foot apart along the makeshift bench. He was cold now, and
he breathed out a feather of his warmer body air. He looked up. In the distance some soldiers were still emptying out the main
explosive. Quickly he wrote down a few notes and handed the solution for the new bomb to an officer. He didn’t fully
understand it, of course, but they would have this information.

When sunlight enters a room where there is a fire, the fire will go out. He had loved Lord Suffolk and his strange bits of
information. But his absence here, in the sense that everything now depended on Singh, meant Singh’s awareness swelled to all
bombs of this variety across the city of London. He had suddenly a map of responsibility, something, he realized, that Lord
Suffolk carried within his character at all times. It was this awareness that later created the need in him to block so much out
when he was working on a bomb. He was one of those never interested in the choreography of power. He felt uncomfortable in
the ferrying back and forth of plans and solutions. He felt capable only of reconnaissance, of locating a solution. When the
reality of the death of Lord Suffolk came to him, he concluded the work he was assigned to and reenlisted into the anonymous
machine of the army. He was on the troopship Macdonald, which carried a hundred other sappers towards the Italian
campaign. Here they were used not just for bombs but for building bridges, clearing debris, setting up tracks for armoured rail
vehicles. He hid there for the rest of the war. Few remembered the Sikh who had been with Suffolk’s unit. In a year the whole
unit was disbanded and forgotten, Lieutenant Blackler being the only one to rise in the ranks with his talent.

But that night as Singh drove past Lewisham and Black-heath towards Erith, he knew he contained, more than any other
sapper, the knowledge of Lord Suffolk. He was expected to be the replacing vision.

He was still standing at the truck when he heard the whistle that meant they were turning off the arc lights. Within thirty
seconds metallic light had been replaced with sulphur flares in the back of the truck. Another bomb raid. These lesser lights
could be doused when they heard the planes. He sat down on the empty petrol can facing the three components he had removed
from the SC-25okg, the hisses from the flares around him loud after the silence of the arc lights.

He sat watching and listening, waiting for them to click. The other men silent, fifty yards away. He knew he was for now a
king, a puppet master, could order anything, a bucket of sand, a fruit pie for his needs, and those men who would not cross an
uncrowded bar to speak with him when they were off duty would do what he desired. It was strange to him. As if he had been
handed a large suit of clothes that he could roll around in and whose sleeves would drag behind him. But he knew he did not
like it. He was accustomed to his invisibility. In England he was ignored in the various barracks, and he came to prefer that.
The self-sufficiency and privacy Hana saw in him later were caused not just by his being a sapper in the Italian campaign. It
was as much a result of being the anonymous member of another race, a part of the invisible world. He had built up defences
of character against all that, trusting only those who befriended him. But that night in Erith he knew he was capable of having
wires attached to him that influenced all around him who did not have his specific talent.

A few months later he had escaped to Italy, had packed the shadow of his teacher into a knapsack, the way he had seen the
green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk and Miss Morden had offered to
take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless, acquiesced and went with him to a screaming
child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with him when he lay in his tent with Hana in the small hill town in
Italy.

Revealing his past or qualities of his character would have been too loud a gesture. Just as he could never turn and inquire of
her what deepest motive caused this relationship. He held her with the same strength of love he felt for those three strange
English people, eating at the same table with them, who had watched his delight and laughter and wonder when the green boy


raised his arms and flew into the darkness high above the stage, returning to teach the young girl in the earth-bound family
such wonders too.

In the flare-lit darkness of Erith he would stop whenever planes were heard, and one by one the sulphur torches were sunk
into buckets of sand. He would sit in the droning darkness, moving the seat so he could lean forward and place his ear close to
the ticking mechanisms, still timing the clicks, trying to hear them under the throb of the German bombers above him.

Then what he had been waiting for happened. After exactly one hour, the timer tripped and the percussion cap exploded.
Removing the main gaine had released an unseen striker that activated the second, hidden gaine. It had been set to explode
sixty minutes later—long after a sapper would normally have assumed the bomb was safely defused.

This new device would change the whole direction of Allied bomb disposal. From now on, every delayed-action bomb
would carry the threat of a second gaine. It would no longer be possible for sappers to deactivate a bomb by simply removing
the fuze. Bombs would have to be neutralized with the fuze intact. Somehow, earlier on, surrounded by arc lights, and in his
fury, he had withdrawn the sheared second fuze out of the booby trap. In the sulphureous darkness under the bombing raid he
witnessed the white-green flash the size of his hand. One hour late. He had survived only with luck. He walked back to the
officer and said, “I need another fuze to make sure.”

They lit the flares around him again. Once more light poured into his circle of darkness. He kept testing the new fuzes for
two more hours that night. The sixty-minute delay proved to be consistent.

He was in Erith most of that night. In the morning he woke up to find himself back in London. He could not remember being
driven back. He woke up, went to a table and began to sketch the profile of the bomb, the gaines, the detonators, the whole
ZUS-40 problem, from the fuze up to the locking rings. Then he covered the basic drawing with all the possible lines of attack
to defuse it. Every arrow drawn exactly, the text written out clear the way he had been taught.

What he had discovered the night before held true. He had survived only through luck. There was no possible way to defuse
such a bomb in situ without just blowing it up. He drew and wrote out everything he knew on the large blueprint sheet. At the
bottom he wrote: Drawn by desire of Lord Suffolk, by his student Lieutenant Kirpal Singh, 10 May 1941.

He worked flat-out, crazily, after Suffolk’s death. Bombs were altering fast, with new techniques and devices. He was
barracked in Regent’s Park with Lieutenant

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